■' 1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.3-V^opyright No 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 



Voices of Doubt and Trust 



Voices 

of 

Doubt and Trust 



Selected by 

Volney Streamer 



tfi 



^0'~t('^ c ^'■i 



NEW YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

1897 






C^i-tl^KJlHT 1897 
EV 

VoLNEY Streamer 



Contents 






PAGE 


Note 


vii 


Foreword 


ix 


Authors and Titles 


xi 


Questionings 


I 


Light on the Cloud 


63 


Duty Here and Now 


"3 


Trust 


157 



NOTE 
^T~^HE compiler wishes to express his obligations to the 
following publishers, who have most generously 
allowed selections to be made from the authors on their 
lists : Messrs. D. Appleton ^ Co.; The Bowen-Merrill 
Company; George H. Ellis; C. P. Farrell; Houghton, 
Mifflin ^ Co.; P. J. Kennedy; Lee ^ Shepard; The Mac- 
millan Company; George P. Putnam's Sons; Roberts 
Brothers; Charles Scribner's Sons; Frederick A. Stokes 
Company, and Stone Sf Kimball. 

Thanks are especially due to the following authors, 
who have with uniform courtesy personally given permis- 
sion for this use of their writings : Messrs. Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, John Vance Cheney, William Dean 
Howells, William James, George Klingle, Josiah Royce, 
Goldwin Smith, and Richard Henry Stoddard; also to 
Horace L. Traubel, who has allowed three selections to 
be made from the works of the late Walt Whitman, and 
to Mrs. Helen M. Reeve Aldrich for permitting the 
reprinting of a poem by her gifted daughter, the late Anne 
Reeve Aldrich. 



FOREWORD 

THIS little book makes no aim to fill a gap in 
Literature ; but it is believed that no attempt 
has previously been made to collect under one cover 
such candid expressions of a Soul's search for Truth, 
ranging from the darkness of hopeless Doubt to that 
radiance that fills the heart in sublimest Trust. It is 
conceded, by most people, that the honest and sincere 
expression of opinion — whether one holds with it or 
not — is entitled to a respectful hearing. Many voices 
have spoken in no imcertain tones, and many weary 
Seekers along Life's dusty way have been cheered by 
the faintly echoed hope voiced by another Seeker a 
little in advance. The collector's one earnest desire 
has been to give to a larger audience certain of these 
clear, strong words that have been hitherto sounded 
for the few only, owing to the manner in which they 
were published, or remained unpublished. And he 
trusts that, even in this brief volume, the casual reader 
will perhaps find some new thought, or some new 
expression of an older hope, that may revive his sink- 
ing courage, or give him a moment of cheer. 



Foreword 

As nearly as was practical a regular sequence has 
been maintained along the line of thought the book 
intends to express, and in every instance the author's 
own words are scrupulously given, and the thought 
entire ; wherever extracts have been made, the utmost 
care has been taken that abridgment in no way obscures 
the author's exact meaning, and there is no attempt 
made to edit these selections — they explain themselves 
and require no interpreter. There has been but little 
culled along the beaten paths, but there are certain 
favorites that will be looked for in such a collection, 
and can scarcely be omitted. Many most suitable 
selections were reluctantly laid aside from lack of 
space in the limits set for the work. 

But the intrinsic value of the music is the thing 
which must hold the audience ; without it the most 
elaborately printed program would not avail ; so shall 
we allow the voices to speak, each after its own man- 
ner and degree ? 

V. s. 

New York, July 19, 1897 



Authors and Titles 

Acton, Philip page 

Rev^ill^ 1^2 

Aldrich, Anne Reeve 

A Little Parable 156 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 

" I Vex Me Not With Brooding " 172 

Sleep 102 

Allingham, William 

Autumn 108 

Arnold, Matthew 

Alternatives 144 

Christianity Will Survive 189 

Dover Beach 4^ 

Miracles Going Out 105 

Morality and Religion 151 

Self Dependence 107 

Bailey, Philip James 

We Live in Deeds 148 

Barbauld, Anna Letitia 

Life 85 

Bates, Arlo 

If It Should Be We Are Watched 105 

Little by Little 140 

xi 



Authors and Titles 

Bell, Francis John 

God and Nature 17 

Bliss, Henry Allen 

The Frost Palace 127 

Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen 

On the Shortness of Time 46 

BONAR, HORATIUS 

The Master's Touch 202 

Brooks, Phillips 

Along the Noisy City Ways 142 

Brown, Frances 

Losses 42 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 

« He Giveth His Beloved Sleep " 204 

Browning, Robert 

All Starting Fairly 104 

Beyond 62 

Evelyn Hope 177 

Prospice 80 

Bryant, William Cullen 

To a Waterfowl 199 

Buchanan, Robert 

We Are Children 44 

When We Are All Asleep 5 1 

Burleigh, William Henry 

Blessed Are They That Mourn 174 

xii 



Authors and Titles 

Burroughs, John 

Waiting 169 

Byron, George Gordon, Lord 

The Immortal Mind 82 

Chapman, George 

On Life's Rough Sea 137 

Cheney, Ednah Dow 

The Larger Prayer 173 

Cheney, John Vance 

Tears no 

Clough, Arthur Hugh 

O Thou, Whose Image 172 

Say Not, the Struggle Naught Availeth io6 

Coleridge, Hartley 

Not In Vain 146 

Cooke, Rose Terry 

The Iconoclast 14 

Darwln, Charles 

Man Can Do His Duty 145 

De Aldana, Francisco 

O Lord ! That Seest 199 

Dickinson, Emily 

Griefs 41 

Let Down the Bars, Oh Death! 176 

Our Share of Night to Bear 8x 

Doavden, Edward 

Awakening 77 

ziii 



Authors and Titles 

Dryden, John 

Reason 170 

Eliot, George 



Mortal Men May Be Good Men 


147 


« 0, May I Join the Choir Invisible " 


135 


Rationalism 


99 


Emerson, Ralph Waldo 




Brahma 


76 


Days 


122 


Prayer of a Deaf and Dmnb Boy 


175 


The Problem 


206 


The World-Soul 


35 


Faber, Frederick AVilliam 




The Indwelling Spirit 


205 


The Land Beyond the Sea 


III 


The Right Must Win 


132 


FiSKK, John 




The Idea of God 


168 


Immortality 


181 


France, Anatole 




Evil Necessary 


98 


Greg, William Rathbone 




The Soul and the Future Life 


3> 


Harrison, Frederic 




The Soul and the Future Life 


143 



Henley, William Ernest 

Out of the Night 33 



XIV 



Authors and Titles 



Herbert, George 




Man 


197 


The Pulley 


x8o 


Hewlett, Henry G. 




Progress 


88 


Holmes, Oliver Wendell 




The Ancient Faith 


195 


The Chambered Nautilus 


190 


Hood, Thomas 




The Wayside Cross 


209 


Howells, William Dean 




Bubbles 


55 


Hunt, Leigh 




An Angel in the House 


134 


Huxley, Thomas Henry 




The Golden Rule 


130 


Human Betterment 


75 


Religion and Conduct 


153 


Science and Morals 


140 


The Soul and the Future Life 


11 


Ingersoll, Robert G. 




If Death Ends All 


25 


The Sacred Myths 


66 



Jackson, Helen Hunt 

Doubt 65 

James, William 

Doubt Itself Is a Decision 193 

Is Life Worth Living ? 165 

XV 



Authors and Titles 

Jameson, Anna 

Take Me, Mother Earth 29 

Kemble, Frances Anne 

Like One Who Walketh in a Plenteous Land 85 

Kipling, Rudyard 

Evarra and His Gods 90 

Klingle, George 

While We May 149 

Laighton, Albert 

Under the Leaves 191 



Lebrun, Antoine 




A Dream 


160 


Lee-Hamilton, Eugene 




Faith 


61 


A Flight from Glory 


145 


Sea-Shell Murmurs 


31 


Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 




Nature 


206 


Lowell, James Russell 




God is Not Dumb 


109 


I Grieve Not 


181 


Lyall, Sir Alfred 




The Hindu Sceptie 


3 


Meditations of a Hindu Prince 


18 


Siva 


48 


Marcus Aurelius 




Discourse 


87 



XVI 



Authors and Titles 

Martineau, Harriet 

Beneath this Starry Arch 95 

Martineau, James 

Religion and Conduct 122 

Meredith, George 

The World's Advance 110 

Milton, John 

On His Blindness 192 

MoNKHOusE, Cosmo 

The Spectrum 74 

Montgomery, James 

Prayer 205 

Moore, Thomas 

Come Not, Oh Lord ! 1 77 

MoRLEY, John 

Explanation Not Attack 8 1 

History's Lesson of Patience 89 

Outgrown Associations 121 

Progress Not Automatic 124 

Why False Dogmas Survive 136 

Morpeth, Lord 

How Little of Ourselves We Know 102 

Myers, Frederic William Henry 

Immortality 98 

Naden, Constance Caroline Woodhill 

The Pantheist's Song of Immortality 67 

Omar Khayyam 

« Our Little Life," from TTie Rubaiyat 12 

xvii 



Authors and Titles 

Pater, Walter 

Joy in the Right 155 

Pfeiffer, Emily 

A Chrysalis 100 

Evolution 132 

Past and Future 103 

Pope, Alexander 

Interlacements 164 

Procter, Adelaide Anne 

Through Peace to Light 201 

Realf, Richard 

De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum 5 a 

My Slain 9 

Riley, James Whitcomb 

The Beautiful City 69 

Royce, Josiah 

Optimism and Pessimism 73 

The Rise of the Doctrine of Evolution 83 

Ryan, Rev. Abram J. 

The Song of the Mystic 185 

Savage, Minot Judson 

Doubt 58 

Infidelity 1 1 ^ 

The Pescadero Pebbles 159 

Saxton, Andrew Rice 

The Overflowing Cup ao8 

xviii 



Authors and Titles 

Shakspere, William 

Claudio and the Duke 7- 

When in Disgrace 154 

Sill, Edward Rowland 

The Future 187 

Starlight 125 

SiMMS, William Gilmore 

The Lost Pleiad 47 

Smith, Arabella E. 

If I Should Die To-night 129 

Smith, Goldwln 

Morality and Theism 138 

Spencer, Herbert 

Scientific Grounds for Right Conduct 117 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence 

The Undiscovered Country 30 

Stephen, James Fitz James 

Be Strong and of Good Courage 115 

Stephen, Leslie 

An Agnostic's Apology 4 

Stevenson, Robert Louis 

If This Were Faith 27 

The Touch of Life 99 

Stoddard, Richard Henry 

Why Stand Ye Gazing Into Heaven ? 38 

Story, William Wetmore 

lo Victis 183 

xix 



Authors and Titles 



Streamer, Volney 




The Mirage 


57 


Swinburne, Algernon Charles 




Soul and Body 


54 


Tacitus 




The Memory of Agricola 


96 


Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 




Behind the Veil 


71 


Crossing the Bar 


212 


Honest Doubt 


37 


Nothing Walks with Aimless Feet 


116 


Thomson, James 




The City of Dreadful Night 


22 


A Beeusant 


61 



Thoreau, Henry David 

The Fisher's Boy 196 

TOWNSHEND, ChAUNCY HaRE 

Thy Joy In Sorrow 93 

Trench, Richard Chenevix 

The Law of Love 123 

The Present 196 

Turgenev, Ivan 

A Dialogue 26 

Prayer 34 

Tylor, Edward B. 

Superstition Is Primitive Science 78 

XX 



Authors and Titles 

Unknown 

The Circuit of Being 78 

Hope 167 

A Saddueee's View 59 

The Wayside Virgin 3^ 

Waddington, Samuel 

Soul and Body 47 

Wasson, David Atwood 

All's Well ai3 

Seen and Unseen 170 

Watson, William 

God-Seeking Joi 

White, Andrew Dickson 

The New Bible 94 

White, Joseph Blanco 

Night and Death i93 

Whitman, Walt 

Not One Dissatisfied 44 

The Spider 89 

To One Shortly to Die 97 

Whtttier, John Greenleap 

The Eternal Goodness aio 

The Prayer Seeker 1 1 8 

Williams, Isaac 

There Is a Wound Within Me 75 

Wordsworth, William 

Intimations of Immortality 162 

Xavier, St. Francis 

My God, I Love Thee 203 

xxi 



Questionings 



Truth never can he confirmed enoughf 
Though doubts did ever sleep. 

Shakspere 

MORTALITY 

I said in my heart it is because of the sons of men^ that 
God may prove them, and that they may see that they 
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons 
of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them. 
As the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one 
breath ; and man hath no pre-eminence above the beasts : 
for all is vanity. All go unto one place ; all are of the 
dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit 
ofTuan whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast 
whether it goeth downward to the earth f Wherefore I 
saw that there is nothing better, than that a man should 
rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion : for who 
shall bring him back to see what shall be after him f 

ECCLESIASTES 



THE HINDU SCEPTIC 

I THINK till I weary with thinking 
(Said the sad-eyed Hindu King), 
And I see but shadows around me, 
Illusion in every thing. 

How knowest thou aught of God, 
Of his favor, or of his wrath ? 

Can the little fish tell what the lion thinks. 
Or map out the eagle's path ? 

Can the finite the Infinite search ? 

Did the blind discover the stars ? 
Is the thought I think a thought. 

Or a throb of my brain in its bars ? 

For aught my eye can discern. 

Your God is what you think good, — 

Yourself flashed back from the glass 
When the light pours on it in flood. 

You preach to me to be just. 
And this is his realm, you say. 

And the good are dying of hunger. 
While the bad gorge every day. 



An Agnostic's Apology 

You say that he loveth mercy, 

And the famine is not yet gone ; 
That he hateth the shedder of blood, 

Yet he slayeth us every one. 

You say that my soul shall live, 

That the spirit can never die, — 
If he was content when I was not, 

Why not when I have passed by ? 

You say I must have a meaning, — 

So must dung, and its meaning is flowers ; 

What if our souls are but nurture 
For lives that are higher than ours ? 

When the fish swims out of the water. 
When the birds soar out of the blue, 

Man's thought may transcend man's knowledge 
And your God be no reflex of you. 

Sir Alfred Lyall 

AN AGNOSTIC'S APOLOGY 

ONE insoluble doubt has hatmted men's minds 
since thought began in the world. No answer 
has ever been suggested. One school of philosophers 
hands it to the next. It is denied in one form only to 
reappear in another. The question is not which system 
excludes the doubt, but how it expresses the doubt. 
Admit or deny the competence of reason in theory, we 
all agree that it fails in practice. Theologians revile 
Copyright 1893, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



An Agnostic's Apology 

reason as much as Agnostics ; they then appeal to it 
and it decides against them. They amend their plea 
by excluding certain questions from its jurisdiction, and 
those questions include the whole difficulty. They go 
to revelation, and revelation replies by calling doubt 
mystery. They declare that their consciousness de- 
clares just what they want it to declare. Ours declares 
something else. Who is to decide ? The only appeal 
is to experience, and to appeal to experience is to admit 
the fundamental dogma of Agnosticism. 

Is it not, then, the very height of audacity, in face of 
a difficulty, which meets us at every turn, which has 
perplexed all the ablest thinkers in proportion to their 
ability, which vanishes in one shape only to show itself 
in another, to declare roundly, not only that the diffi- 
culty can be solved, but that it does not exist ? Why, 
when no honest man will deny in private that every 
ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mys- 
tery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitat- 
ing certainty is the duty of the most foolish and 
ignorant ? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels 
laugh ? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling 
our way through mists and darkness, learning only by 
incessantly-repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering 
of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly 
discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hope- 
lessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the 
ultimate origin or end of our paths ; and yet, when one 
of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map 
of the imiverse as well as the map of our infinitesimal. 



An Agnostic's Apology 

parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he 
will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness. 
Amidst all the endless and hopeless controversies 
which have left nothing but bare husks of meaningless 
words, we have been able to discover certain reliable 
truths. They don't take us very far, and the condition 
of discovering them has been distrust of a priori guesses, 
and the systematic interrogation of experience. Let 
us, say some of us, follow at least this clue. Here we 
shall find sufficient guidance for the needs of life, 
though we renounce forever the attempt to get behind 
the veil which no one has succeeded in raising ; if, 
indeed, there be anything behind. You miserable 
Agnostics ! is the retort ; throw aside such rubbish and 
cling to the old husks. Stick to the words which pro- 
fess to explain everything ; call your doubts mysteries, 
and they won't disturb you any longer ; and believe in 
those necessary truths of which no two philosophers 
have ever succeeded in giving the same version. 

Gentlemen, we can only reply, wait till you have 
some show of agreement among yourselves. Wait till 
you can give some answer, not palpably a verbal 
answer, to some of the doubts which oppress us as they 
oppress you. Wait till you can point to some single 
truth, however trifling, which has been discovered by 
your method, and will stand the test of discussion and 
verification. Wait till you can appeal to reason with- 
out in the same breath vilifying reason. Wait till 
your Divine revelations have something more to reveal 
than the hope that the hideous doubts which they sug- 



Claudio and the Duke 

gest may possibly be without foundation. Till then 
we shall be content to admit openly, what you whisper 
under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the 
ancient secret is a secret still ; that man knows nothing 
of the Infinite and Absolute ; and that, knowing noth- 
ing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance. 
And, meanwhile, we will endeavor to be as charitable 
as possible, and whilst you tnmipet forth officially your 
contempt for scepticism, we will at least try to believe 
that you are imposed upon by your own bluster. 

Leslie Stephen 

CLAUDIO AND THE DUKE 

DUKE. Be absolute for death ; either death or 
life 
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life : 
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing 
That none but fools would keep : a breath thou art, 
Servile to all the skyey influences, 
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 
Hourly afflict : merely, thou art death's fool ; 
For him thou labor'st by thy flight to shun. 
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble ; 
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st 
Are nursed by baseness. Thou art by no means valiant ; 
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork 
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, 
And that thou oft provokest ; yet grossly fear'st 
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself ; 



Claudio and the Duke 

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 

That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not ; 

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get, 

And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou are not certain ; 

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects. 

After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor ; 

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, 

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey. 

And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none ; 

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, 

The mere effusion of thy proper loins, 

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, 

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth, nor 

age ; 
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep. 
Dreaming on both ; for all thy blessed youth 
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 
Of palsied eld ; and when thou art old and rich, 
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, 
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this 
That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life 
Lie hid moe thousand deaths : yet death we fear. 
That makes these odds all even. 

Claudio. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 

This sensible warm motion to become 

A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 

8 



My Slain 

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts 
Imagine howling : — 'tis too horrible ! 
The weariest and most loathed worldly life, 
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
To what we fear of death, 

Shakspere 
Measure for Measure 



MY SLAIN 

THIS sweet child which hath climbed upon my 
knee. 

This amber-haired, four- summered little maid, 
With her unconscious beauty troubleth me, 

With her low prattle maketh me afraid. 
Ah, darling ! when you cling and nestle so 

You hurt me though you do not see me cry, 

Nor hear the weariness with which I sigh. 
For the dear babe I killed so long ago. 

I tremble at the touch of your caress; 
I am not worthy of your innocent faith; 

I who with whetted knives of worldliness 
Did put my own child-heartedness to death, 

Beside whose grave I pace forevermore, 

Like desolation on a shipwrecked shore. 



My Slain 

There is no little child within me now 

To sing back to the thrushes, to leap up 
When June winds kiss me, when an apple-bough 

Laughs into blossoms, or a buttercup 
Plays with the sunshine, or a violet 

Dances in the glad dew. Alas ! alas ! 

The meaning of the daisies in the grass 
I have forgotten ; and if my cheeks are wet, 

It is not with the blitheness of the child, 
But with the bitter sorrow of past years. 

O moaning life, with life irreconciled ; 
O backward-looking thought, O pain, O tears, 

For us there is not any silver sound 

Of rhythmic wonders springing from the ground. 

Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore 

Which makes men mummies, weighs out every grain 

Of that which was miraculous before, 

And sneers the heart down with the scoffing brain ; 

Woe worth the peering, analytic days 
That dry the tender juices in the breast 
And put the thunders of the Lord to test, 

So that no marvel must be, and no praise, 
Nor any God except necessity. 

What can ye give my poor starved life in lieu 
Of this dead cherub which I slew for ye ? 

Take back your doubtful wisdom, and renew 
My early, foolish freshness of the dmice. 
Whose simple instincts guessed the heavens at once. 

Richard Realf 



lO 



THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

A reply to Frederic Harrison. (See Section Third) 

I UNDERSTAND and I respect the meaning of the 
word "soul," as used by Pagan and Christian 
philosophers for what they believe to be the imperish- 
able seat of human personality, bearing throughout 
eternity its burden of woe, or its capacity for adora- 
tion and love. I confess that my dull moral sense does 
not enable me to see anything base or selfish in the de- 
sire for a future life among the spirits of the just made 
perfect ; or even among a few such poor fallible souls 
as one has known here below. And if I am not satis- 
fied with the evidence which is offered me that such a 
soul and such a future life exist, I am content to take 
what is to be had and to make the best of the brief 
span of existence that is within my reach, without re- 
viling those whose faith is more robust and whose hopes 
are richer and fuller. But in the interest of scientific 
clearness, I object to say that I have a soul, when I 
mean, all the while, that my organism has certain 
mental functions which, like the rest, are dependent 
upon its molecular composition, and come to an end 
when I die ; and I object still more to affirm that I 
look to a future life, when all that I mean is, that the 
influence of my sayings and doings will be more or less 
felt by a number of people after the physical com- 
ponents of that organism are scattered to the four 
winds. 

II 



" Our Little Life " 

Throw a stone into the sea, and there is a sense in 
which it is true that the wavelets which spread around 
it have an efPect through all space and all time. Shall 
we say that the stone has a future life ? 

It is not worth while to have broken away, not with- 
out pain and grief, from beliefs which, true or false, 
embody great and fruitful conceptions, to fall back into 
the arms of a half-breed between science and theology 
endowed, like most half-breeds, with the faults of both 
parents and the virtues of neither. It is unwise by 
such a lapse to expose one's self to the temptation of 
holding with the hare and hunting with the hoimds — of 
using the weapons of one progenitor to damage the 
other. Thomas Henry Huxley ' 

"OUR LITTLE LIFE" 

THE Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon 
Turns Ashes — or it prospers ; and anon. 
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, 
Lighting a little hour or two — was gone. 

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai 
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, 

How Sultdn after Sultan with his Pomp 
Abode his destin'd Hour, and went his way. 

For Some we loved, the loveliest and the best 
That from his Vintage rolling Time has prest, 

Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, 
And one by one crept silently to rest. 

12 



" Our Little Life " 

And we, that now make merry in the Room 
They left, and Smnmer dresses in new bloom, 

Oui'selves must we beneath the Conch of Earth 
Descend — ourselves to make a Couch — for whom ? 

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 
Before we too into the Dust descend ; 

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie 
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End! 

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd 
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly are thrust 

Like foolish Prophets forth ; their Words to Scorn 
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. 

Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 

About it and about : but evermore 
Came out by the same door where in I went. 

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow. 

And with my own hand wrought to make it grow ; 

And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd — 
" I came like Water, and like Wind I go." 

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing. 
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing ; 

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, 
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing. 

What, without asking, hither hurried Whence f 
And, without asking. Whither hurried hence ! 

13 



" Our Little Life " 

Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine 
Must drown the memory of that insolence ! 

And fear not lest Existence closing your 
Account, and mine, should know the like no more ; 

The Eternal Sdki from that Bowl has pour'd 
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour. 

When You and I behind the Veil are past, 

Oh but the long long while the World shall last, 

Which of our Coming and Departure heeds 
As the Sev'n Seas should heed a pebble cast. 

A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste 

Of Being from the Well amid the Waste — 

And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reach'd 
The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste ! 

Would you that Spangle of Existence spend 
About The Secret — quick about it. Friend ! 

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True — 
And upon what, prithee, does Life depend ? 

threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise ! 
One thing at least is certain, — This Life flies ; 

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ; 
The Flower that once has blown forever dies. 

Strange, is it not ? that of the myriads who 
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through 

Not one returns to tell us of the Road, 
Which to discover we must travel too. 



14 



"Our Little Life" 

The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd 
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd, 

Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep 
They told their fellows, and to Sleep retum'd. 

I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell ; 

And by and by my Soul retum'd to me. 
And answered, " I Myself am Heav'n and Hell." 

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfilPd Desire, 
And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire. 

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, 
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire. 

We are no other than a moving row 

Of Magic shadow-shapes that come and go 

Round with this Sun-illumin'd Lantern held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; 

Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays 

Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days ; 

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, 
But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes ; 

And He that toss'd you down into the Field, 
He knows about it all — he knows — HE knows ! 

The Moving Finger writes ; and having writ. 
Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit 

15 



"Our Little Life" 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. 

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, 
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, 

Lift not your hands to It ioT help — for It 
As impotently rolls as you or I. 

What ! out of senseless Nothing to provoke 
A Conscious Something to resent the Yoke 

Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain 
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke ! 

What, from his helpless Creature be repaid 
Pure Gold for what he lent us dross-allay'd — 

Sue for a Debt we never did contract. 
And cannot answer — Oh the sorry trade ! 

Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin 
Beset the Road I was to wander in, 

Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round 
Emmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin ! 

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make 
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake ; 

For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
Is blacken'd — Man's Forgiveness give — and take ! 

Omar KhayyAm 
Rub AIT AT, Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 



i6 



GOD AND NATURE 
^ ^ A RE God and Nature then at strife ? " asks 
j[\^ Tennyson. The question illuminates one 
of the most striking chapters in human thought. When 
we trace the history of the idea of God as it probably 
arose in the mind of early man, we find that it stands 
for his crude theory of a Spirit which caused Nature to 
be, which he believed to control and actuate the forces 
of sun and air, storm and pestilence. These views, 
from their elevation of subject, unwarrantably gained 
a sacredness of character which made them rigid, 
almost unchangeable. Hence the idea of the Divine 
Personality and Government has hung farther and 
farther behind man's advancing knowledge of Nature — 
that knowledge from which, in its first poor estate, his 
idea of God was derived. At last, God and Nature are 
imagined " At Strife." But what should be the idea 
of God here and now but an answer to the question, 
What kind of Being would make and conduct such a 
universe as this ? The degree of verity in this idea of 
God would plainly depend upon the fullness of the 
knowledge of Nature whence it would proceed, the 
degree of completeness with which that knowledge 
would be co-ordinated and unified. Very different 
from such an idea of God is the idea of Him inherited 
from men who lived thousands of years ago in the 
ignorance and moral poverty then inevitable. The 
conflict between theology and science proves indeed to 

17 



Meditations of a Hindu Prince 

be little else than the discord between new knowledge 
and old guesses. 

But why not dispense with the idea of God alto- 
gether ? We have ceased to believe that He interferes 
with the order of Kature : let us endeavor to learn 
what that order is and abide by it. Let us reason 
directly from facts known to facts unknown and proba- 
ble, without the refraction unavoidable when a hypo- 
thetical Person (abstracted after all from known facts) 
is brought into the case. What after all does God do, 
that Science does not enable us to know, or to predict 
with increasing probability ? Why make a Mirror of 
Nature, liable to limitation and warp, when Nature 
bids us look immediately upon her face ? 

Francis John Bell 

MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE 

ALL the world over, I wonder, in lands that I 
never have trod. 
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and 

steps of a God ? 
Westward across the ocean, and northward ayont the 

snow. 
Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the 
wisest know ? 

Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and 

swarm 
Like the wild bees heard in the tree tops, or the gusts 

of a gathering storm; 

i8 



Meditations of a Hindu Prince 

In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks 

are seen, 
Yet we all say, « Whence is the message, and what 

may the wonders mean ? " 

A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer 

swings, 
As they bow to a mystical symbol, or the figures of 

ancient kings; 
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry 
Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards loth to 

die. 

For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass 

of the hills; 
Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot 

that kills; 
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand 

unknown, 
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to 

a stone. 

The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns 
hollow and grim. 

And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in 
the twilight dim; 

And we look to the starlight falling afar on the moun- 
tain crest — 

Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there 
and a rest ? 

19 



Meditations of a Hindu Prince 

The path, ah ! who has shown it, and which is the 

faithful guide ? 
The haven, ah ! who has known it ? for steep is the 

mountain side, 
Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted 

breath 
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only 

death. 

Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an an- 
cient name. 

Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who 
died in flame ; 

They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are 
spirits who guard our race : 

Ever I watch and worship ; they sit with a marble 
face. 

And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of 

muttering priests, 
The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable 

feasts ! 
What have they wrung from the Silence ? Hath even 

a whisper come 
Of the secret, Whence and Whither ? Alas ! for the 

gods are dumb. 

Shall I list to the words of the English, who come 

from the uttermost sea ? 
" The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your 

message to me ? " 

20 



Meditations of a Hindu Prince 

It is nought but the world-wide story how the earth 

and the heavens began, 
How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once 

was a man. 

I had thought, " Perchance in the cities where the 

rulers of India dwell. 
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the 

earth with a spell, 
They have fathom'd the depths we float on, or measured 

the unknown main — " 
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the 

quest is vain. 

Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the 
dreamer awake ? 

Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if 
the mirror break ? 

Shall it pass like a camp that is struck, as a tent that 
is gathered and gone 

From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morn- 
ing are level and lone ? 

Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail 

and the levin are hurl'd, 
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the 

rolling world ? 
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to 

silence and sleep 
With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and voices 

of women who weep ? 

Sir Alfred Lyall 

21 



THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 
^ ^ /^ BROTHERS of sad lives ! they are so brief ; 
V_y A few short years must bring us all relief : 
Can we not bear these years of laboring breath ? 
But if you would not this poor life fulfil, 
Lo, you are free to end it when you will, 
Without the fear of waking after death." 



Our shadowy congregation rested still, 
As musing on that message we had heard, 

And brooding on that ; ' End it when you will ; ' 
Perchance awaiting yet some other word ; 

When keen as lightning through a muffled sky 

Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry : — 

« The man speaks sooth, alas ! the man speaks sooth ; 

We have no personal life beyond the grave ; 
There is no God ; there is no wrath nor ruth : 

Can I find here the comfort which I crave ? 

" In all eternity I had one chance, 

One few years' term of gracious human life : 

The splendors of the intellect's advance. 

The sweetness of the home with babes and wife ; 



« The rapture of mere being, full of health ; 

The careless childhood and the ardent youth. 
The strenuous manhood winning various wealth, 

The reverend age serene with life's long truth : 

22 



The City of Dreadful Night 

«« All the sublime prerogatives of Man ; 

The storied memories of the times of old, 
The patient tracking of the world's great plan 

Through sequences and changes myriadfold. 

" This chance was never offered me before ; 

For me the infinite Past is blank and dimib : 
This chance recurreth never, nevermore ; 

Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come. 



" Speak not of comfort where no comfort is, 

Speak not at all : can words make foul things fair ? 

Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss : 
Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair." 

This vehement voice came from the northern aisle. 
Rapid and shrill to its abrupt, harsh close ; 

And none gave answer for a certain while, 

For words must shrink from these most wordless woes ; 

At last the pulpit speaker simply said. 

With humid eyes, and thoughtful, drooping head, — 

" My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus ; 
This life holds nothing good for us, 

But it ends soon and nevermore can be ; 
And we knew nothing of it ere our birth. 
And shall know nothing when consigned to earth : 

I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me." 

James Thomson 



23 



THE ICONOCLAST 

A THOUSAND years shall come and go, 
A thousand years of night and day, 
And man, through all their changing show. 
His tragic drama still shall play. 

Ruled by some fond ideal's power, 

Cheated by passion or despair. 
Still shall ho waste life's trembling hour. 

In worship vain, and useless prayer. 

Ah ! where are they who rose in might. 
Who fired the temple and the shrine, 

And hurled through Earth's Chaotic Night, 
The helpless gods it deemed divine ? 

Cease, longing soul, thy vain desire ! 

What idol, in its stainless prime. 
But falls, untouched of ax or iire. 

Before the steady eyes of Time ? 

He looks, and lo ! our altars fall, 
The shrine reveals its gilded clay, 

With decent hands we spread the pall. 
And, cold with wisdom, glide away. 

Oh, where were courage, faith, and truth. 
If man went w«andering all his day 

In golden clouds of love and youth, 
Nor knew that both his steps betray ? 

Come, Time, while here we sit and wait. 

Be faithful, spoiler, to thy trust ! 
No death can further desolate 

The soul that knows its god was dust. 

llosE Terry Cooke 

24 



IF DEATH ENDS ALL 

AND suppose, after all, that death does end all. 
Next to eternal joy, next to being forever with 
those we love and those who have loved us — next to 
that, is to be wrapped in the dreamless drapery of 
eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal sleep. 
Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble 
casts no wave. Eyes that liave been curtained by the 
everlasting dark will never know again the burning 
touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will 
never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts 
of dust do not break. The dead do not weep. VV ithin 
the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits. And in 
the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear. 

I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, 
as having returned to earth, as having become a part 
of the elemental wealth of the world ; I would rather 
think of them as imconscious dust ; I woidd rather 
think of them as gurgling in the stream, floating in 
the clouds, bursting in light upon the shores of other 
worlds ; I would rather think of them as the lost visions 
of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest 
fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an 
orthodox god. But as for me, I will leave the dead 
where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope 
springs in my heart I will cherish ; I will give it breath 
of sighs and rain of tears. 

Robert G. Ingersoll 
Prose Poems 

Copyright 1884, by C. P. Farrell 
25 



A DIALOGUE 

THE Alpine sunmiits — a complete chain of steep 
precipices, right in the heart of the Alps. 
Over the mountains is a pale-green, clear, silent sky. 
Hard, biting frost ; firm, sparkling snow ; dark, 
weather-beaten, ice-bound crags rise from beneath the 
snow. 

Two colossi, two giants, rise from the horizon on 
either side — the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn. 

And the Jungfrau asks her neighbor : " What is the 
news ? You can see better ; what is going on down 
there ? " 

Thousands of years pass by — as one moment. And 
Finsteraarhorn thunders back the answer : " Impene 
trable clouds veil the earth. . . wait ! " 

Again thousands of years pass — as one moment. 

" Well, what now ? " asks the Jungfrau. 

" Now, see : everything there is unchanged, confused, 
and petty. Blue water, dark woods, heaped up masses 
of gray stone, with those little insects running all about, 
you know — the two-legged ones which have never yet 
intruded upon your summit or mine." 

"Men?" 

" Yes, men." 

Again thousands of years pass by — as a moment. 

" Well, what now ? " asks the Jungfrau. 

" It seems to me as if fewer of those insects are to 
be seen," thunders Finsteraarhorn — " It's getting 

26 



If This Were Faith 

clearer down there — the waters narrower, the woods 
thinner." 

Again thousands of years pass by — like one moment. 

" What do you see now ? " asks the Jungfrau. 

"Round about us, near by, it seems to have got 
clearer," answered Finsteraarhorn ; « but down there, 
in the distance, in the valleys there are still some spots, 
and something moving." 

" And now ? " asks the Jungfrau, after thousands of 
years more — a mere moment. 

" Now all is well," answered Finsteraarhorn — " clear 
and shining everywhere : pure white wherever you 
look. . . . Our snow everywhere, nothing but snow 
and ice. All is frozen. All is calm and peaceful." 

" Yes, now it is well ! " answers the Jungfrau ; " but 
we have talked enough, old friend. Let us sleep 
awhile." 

" Yes, it is time we did." 

They sleep, the giant mountains. The clear green 
sky above the ever-silent earth. 

Ivan Turgenev 

Poems in prose 

IF THIS WERE FAITH 

GOD, if this were enough. 
That I see things bare to the buff 
And up to the buttocks in mire ; 
That I ask nor hope nor hire. 

From " Poems and Ballads." Copyright 1895, by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons 

27 



If This Were Faith 

Nut in the husk, 
Nor dawn beyond the dusk, 
Nor life beyond death ; 
God, if this were faith ? 

Having felt thy wind in my face 

Spit sorrow and disgrace. 

Having seen thine evil doom 

In Golgotha and Khartoum, 

And the brutes, the work of thine hands, 

Fill with injustice lands 

And stain with blood the sea : 

If still in my veins the glee 

Of the black night and the sun 

And the lost battle run : 

If, an adept. 

The iniquitous lists I still accept 

With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood. 

And still to battle and perish for a dream of good 

God, if that were enough ? 

If to feel, in the ink of the slough, 

And the sink of the mire, 

Veins of glory and fire 

Run through and transpierce and transpire, 

And a secret purpose of glory in every part, 

And the answering glory of battle fill my heart. 

To thrill with the joy of girded men 

To go on forever and fail, and go on again. 

And be mauled to the earth and arise, 

28 



Take Me, Mother Earth 

And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not 

seen with the eyes : 
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night 
That somehow the right is the right 
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough : 
Lord, if that were enough ? 

Robert Louis Stevenson 



T 



TAKE ME, MOTHER EARTH 
AKE me, Mother Earth, to thy cold breast, 
And fold me there in everlasting rest ! 
The long day is o'er; 
I'm weary, I would sleep; 
But deep, deep, 
Never to waken more ! 



I have had joy and sorrow, I have prov'd 

What life could give ; have lov'd, and been belov'd ; 

I am sick, and heart-sore, 

And weary, let me sleep; 

But deep, deep, 

Never to waken more. 

To thy dark chamber, Mother Earth, I come, 
Prepare thy dreamless bed in my last home; 

Shut down the marble door. 

And leave me ! Let me sleep; 

But deep, deep, 

ISTever to waken more ! 

Anna Jameson 

29 



THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

COULD we but know 
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, 
Where lie those happier hills and meadows low, — 
Ah, if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil, 

Aught of that coimtry could we surely know. 
Who would not go ? 

Might we but hear 
The hovering angels' high imagined chorus. 

Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear. 
One radiant vista of the realm before us, — 
With one rapt moment given to see and hear. 
Ah, who would fear ? 

Were we quite sure 
To find the peerless friend who left us lonely. 
Or there, by some celestial stream as pure, 
To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only, — 
This mortal coil, were we quite sure. 
Who would endure ? 

Edmund Clarence Stedman 

Copyright 1884, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

See " Hope" a reply to ahovcy in Section Fourth, 



30 



SEA-SHELL MURMURS 

THE hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood 
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear 
Proclaims its stormy parents ; and we hear 
The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. 
We hear the sea. The sea ? It is the blood 
In our own veins, impetuous and near. 
And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear 
And with our feelings' every shifting mood. 
Lo ! in my heart I hear, as in a shell. 

The murmur of a world beyond the grave. 
Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. 
Thou fool ; this echo is a cheat as well, — 
The hum of earthly instincts ; and we crave 
A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. 

Eugene Lee-Hamilton 

THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 
If belief be ever permissible — perhaps I ought to 
say, if belief be ever possible — on the ground that 
" there is peace and joy in believing," it is here, where 
the issues are so vast, where the conception in its high- 
est form is so ennobling, where the practical influences 
of the Creed are, in appearance, at least, so beneficent. 
But faith thus arrived at has ever clinging to it the 
curse belonging to all illegitimate possessions. It is 
precarious, because the flaw in its title-deeds, barely 
suspected perhaps and never acknowledged, may at 

31 



The Soul and the Future Life 

any moment be discovered ; misgivings crop up most 
surely in those hard and gloomy crises of our lives 
when unflinching confidence is most essential to our 
peace ; and the fairy fabric, built up not on grounded 
conviction but on craving need, crumbles into dust, 
and leaves the spirit with no solid sustenance to rest 
upon. 

Alas ! can the wisest and most sanguine of us all 
bring anything beyond our own personal sentiments to 
swell the common hope ? We have aspirations to 
multiply, but who has any knowledge to enrich our 
store ? I have of course read most of the pleadings 
in favor of the ordinary doctrine of the future state; 
naturally also, in common with all graver natures, I 
have meditated yet more; but these pleadings, for the 
most part, sound to anxious ears little else than the 
passionate outcries of souls that cannot endure to part 
with hopes on which they have been nurtured, and 
which are intertwined with their tenderest affections. 
Logical reasons to compel conviction, I have met with 
none. Yet few can have sought for them more 
yearningly. I may say I share in the anticipations of 
believers; but I share them as aspirations, sometimes 
approaching almost to a faith, occasionally, and for a 
few moments, perhaps rising into something like a 
trust, but never able to settle into the consistency of a 
definite and enduring creed. I do not know how far 
even this incomplete state of mind may not be merely 
the residuum of early upbringing and habitual associa- 
tions. But I must be true to my darkness as coura- 

32 



Out of the Night 

geously as to my light. I cannot rest in comfort on 
arguments that to my spirit have no cogency, nor can 
I pretend to respect or be content with reasons which 
carry no penetrating conviction along vnth. them. I 
will not make buttresses do the work or assume the 
posture of foundations. I will not cry " Peace, peace, 
when there is no peace." 

The more I think and question, the more do doubts 
and difficulties crowd around my horizon, and cloud 
over my sky. Thus it is that I am unable to bring 
aid or sustainment to minds as troubled as my own, 
and perhaps less willing to admit that the great 
enigma is, and must remain, insoluble. Of two 
things, however, I feel satisfied — that the negative 
doctrine is no more susceptible of proof than the 
affirmative, and that our opinion, be it only honest, can 
have no influence whatever on the issue, nor upon its 
bearing on ourselves. 

William Rathboxe Greg 

A modern symposium 

OUT OF THE NIGHT 

OUT of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

33 



Prayer 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate : 
1 am the captain of my soul. 

William Ernest Henley 

PRAYER 

WHATEVER a man may pray for, he prays for 
a miracle. Every prayer comes to this : 
" Great God, let twice two not make four." 

Only such a prayer is a real prayer, face to face. 
To pray to the Spirit of the universe, to the Supreme 
Being, — to the abstract, unreal god of Kant or Hegel, 
— is impossible, unthinkable. 

But can a personal, living, imaginable God make 
twice two other than four ? 

Every true believer must answer "Yes, He can." 
And he is obliged to convince himself of it. 

But what if his reason rebels against such nonsense ? 

Then Shakspere comes to his aid : " There are 
more things in heaven and earth, Horatio." 

But if you seek to controvert him in the name 
of truth ? — he has merely to repeat the well-known 
question, « What is truth ? " 

And so, let us eat, drink, and be merry, — and pray. 
Ivan Turgenev — Poems in prose 

34 



THE WORLD-SOUL 

ALAS ! the Sprite that haunts us 
Deceives our rash desire ; 
It whispers of the glorious gods, 

And leaves us in the mire. 
We cannot learn the cipher 

That's writ upon our cell ; 
Stars taunt us by a mystery 
Which we could never spell. 

And what if Trade sow cities 

Like shells along the shore, 
And thatch with towns the prairies broad 

With railways ironed o'er ? — 
They are but sailing f oam-beils 

Along Thought's causing stream, 
And take their shape and sun-color 

From him that sends the dream. 



He serveth the servant, 

The brave he loves amain ; 
He kills the cripple and the sick, 

And straight begins again ; 
For gods delight in gods. 

And thrust the weak aside ; 
To him who scorns their charities 

Their arms fly open wide. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



35 



THE WAYSIDE VIRGIN 

I AM the Virgin ; from this granite ledge 
A hundred weary winters I have watched 
The lonely road that wanders at my feet, 
And many days I've sat here, in my lap 
A little heap of snow, and overhead 
The dry, dead voices of sere, rustling leaves ; 
While scarce a beggar creaked across the way. 
How very old I am ; I have forgot 
The day they fixed me here ; and whence I came, 
With crown of gold, and all my heavenly blue. 

How green the grass is now, and all around 

Blossoms the May ; but it is cold in here. 

Sunless and cold. Now comes a little maid 

To kneel among the daisies at my feet ; 

What a sweet noise she makes, like murmurings 

Of bees in June. I wonder what they say, 

These rosy mortals when they look at me ? 

I wonder why 

They call me Mary, and bow down to me ? 

Oh, I am weary of my painted box ! 

Come child, 

And lay thy warm face on my wooden cheek. 

That I may feel it glow as once of yore 

It glowed when I, a cedar's happy heart, 

Felt the first sunshine of the early spring. 

Unknown 

36 



HONEST DOUBT 

YOU say, but with no touch of scorn, 
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 

I know not : one indeed I knew 
In many a subtQe question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first. 

But ever strove to make it true : 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

He fought his doubts and gathered strength. 
He would not make his judgment blind. 
He faced the specters of the mind 

And laid them : thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 

And dwells not in the light alone. 

But in the darkness and the cloud, 
As over Sinai's peaks of old, 
While Israel made their gods of gold, 

Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. 

37 



Why Stand Ye Gazing Into Heaven ? 

Who loves not knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 

Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 

But on her forehead sits a fire : 

She sets her forward countenance 

And leaps into the future chance, 
Submitting all things to desire. 

Half -grown as yet, a child, and vain — 
She cannot fight the fear of death. 
What is she, cut from love and faith, 

But some wild Pallas from the brain 

Of Demons ? fiery-hot to burst 
All barriers in her onward race 
For power. Let her know her place. 
She is the second, not the first. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
In Memoriam 

WHY STAND YE GAZING INTO HEAVEN? 

WHY stand ye gazing into Heaven ? 
What seek ye there ? what hope to find 
Besides the clouds, which the cold wind 
Drives round the world from Morn to Even ? 
The wan moon, ploughed with ancient scars, 
The gracious sun, the alien stars, 
The all-embracing Space ? 
Ye look for God ? 
From " Poems," copyright 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons 

38 



Why Stand Ye Gazing Into Heaven? 

Have ye beheld him there ? 
You, or your fathers in their prime ? 
Or any man, at any time, 

The wise, the good, the fair ? 
Who has beheld — I will not say his face, 
But where his feet have trod ? 
What have your straining eyes 
Discovered in the skies ? 

Why not look down the Sea ? 
'Tis deep, and most creative ; What eludes 
In the upper solitudes. 
Still lui'king in the lower wastes may be. 
Ye look for God, ye tell me. Tell me this — 

How know ye that He is ? 
Because your fathers told ye so, and they 
Because of old, their fathers told them so ; 
As it is now, so was it long ago, 
And will be when the years have passed away. 

Nothing can come from nothing. Well, what then ? 

The Earth, with all its men. 

The little insect burrowing in the sod, 

Sun, planet, star, 

All things that are. 
Must have been made by God. 
Why made by Him ? Who saw them made ? 
Who saw the deep foundations laid ? 

The Hands that built the wall ? 

Why made at all ? 
Why not Eternal, tell me ? Not because 

39 



Why Stand Ye Gazing Into Heaven? 

It must created be : 

If so Eternal He, 
But why Eternal ? — why not also This ? 
Why must the All be His ? 
It was, and is, and is — ^because it was ! 

There is no God then ? Nay, 

You say it, and not I ; 

I do but say 
We have not yet beheld this God on High : 
Not knowing that He is, we live and die. 
If we know nothing of Him, yet we feel. 

We feel love's kisses sweet, 

The wine that trips our feet, 
The murderous thrust of steel: 
Gladness about the heart when the sun breaks, 
Or the soft moon is floating up the skies. 
Delight in the wild sea, in tranquil lakes, 

In every bird that flies ; 

And hot tears in our eyes. 
When love, the best of earth, its last kiss over — dies ! 
But He whom we name God, and grope so for above. 
Whose arm, we fear, is Power, whose heart, we 
hope, is Love 

On the worlds below Him, 

In the dust before Him, 

We may adore Him, 

We cannot know Him, 
If, indeed. He be, to bless or curse. 
And be not this tremendous Universe ! 

40 



Griefs 

" Higher than your arrows fly, 

Deeper than your plummets fall, 
Is the Deepest, the Most High, 

Is the All in All ! " 

Richard HsafRY Stoddard 

GRIEFS 

I MEASURE every grief I meet 
With analytic eyes; 
I wonder if it weighs like mine, 
Or has an easier size. 

I wonder if they bore it long, 

Or did it just begin ? 
I could not tell the date of mine. 

It feels so old a pain. 

I wonder if it hurts to live. 

And if they have to try. 
And whether, could they choose between. 

They would not rather die. 

I wonder if when years have piled — 
Some thousands — on the cause 

Of early hurt, if such a lapse 
Could give them any pause; 

Or would they go on aching still 

Through centuries above. 
Enlightened to a larger pain 
By contrast with the love. 
Copyright 1893, by Roberts Brothers 

41 



Losses 

The grieved are many, I am told; 

The reason deeper lies — 
Death is but one and comes but once, 

And only nails the eyes. 

There's grief of want and grief of cold — 

A sort they call " despair"; 
There's banishment from native eyes, 

In sight of native air. 

And though I may not guess the kind 

Correctly, yet to me 
A piercing comfort it affords 

In passing Calvary, 

To note the fashions of the cross, 

Of those that stand alone. 
Still fascinated to presume 

That some are like my own. 

Emily Dickinson 

LOSSES 

UPON the white sea sand 
There sat a pilgrim band. 
Telling the losses that their lives had known : 
While evening waned away 
From breezy cliff and bay. 
And the strong tides went out with weary moan. 

One spake, with quivering lip. 
Of a fair freighted ship. 
With all his household to the deep gone down ; 
But one had wilder woe — 



42 



Losses 

For a fair face, long ago 
Lost in the darker depths of a great town. 

There were who mourned their youth 

With a most loving ruth, 
For its brave hopes and memories ever green ; 

And one upon the west 

Turned an eye that could not rest, 
For far-off hills whereon its joy had been. 

Some talked of vanished gold, 

Some of proud honors told, 
Some spake of friends that were their trust no more 

And one of a green grave 

Beside a foreign wave, 
That made him sit so lonely on the shore. 

But when their tales were done, 

There spake among them one, 
A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free : 

" Sad losses have ye met. 

But mine is heavier yet : 
For a believing heart hath gone from me." 

" Alas ! " these pilgrims said, 

" For the living and the dead — 
For fortune's cruelty, for love's sure cross, 

For the wrecks of land and sea ! 

But, however, it came to thee, 
Thine, stranger, is life's last and heaviest loss." 

Frances Brown 



43 



NOT ONE DISSATISFIED 

I THINK I could turn and live with animals, they 
are so placid and self-contain'd, 
I stand and look at them long and long. 
They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. 
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the 

mania of owning things, 
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived 

thousands of years ago. 
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole 

earth. Walt Whitman 

Copyright 1881, by Walt Whitman Song of Myself 

WE ARE CHILDREN 

CHILDREN indeed are we — children that wait 
Within a wondrous dwelling, while on high 
Stretch the sad vapors and the voiceless sky ; 
The house is fair, yet all is desolate 
Because our Father comes not ; clouds of fate 
Sadden above us — shivering we espy 
The passing rain, the cloud before the gate, 
And cry to one another, " He is nigh ! " 
At early morning, with a shining Face, 
He left us innocent and lily-crown'd ; 
And now this late — night cometh on apace — 
We hold each other's hands and look around. 
Frighted at our own shades ! Heaven send us grace ! 
When He returns, all will be sleeping sound. 

Robert Buchanan 



DOVER BEACH 

THE Sea is calm to-night. 
The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straits ; — on the French coast the light 
Gleams and is gone ; the cliJBPs of England stand, 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
Come to the window, sweet is the night air ! 
Only, from the long line of spray 
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd sand, 
Listen ! You hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling. 
At their return, up the high strand. 
Begin, and cease, and then again begin. 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the -ZEgean, and it brought 

Into his mind the txirbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery ; we 

Find also in the soimd a thought. 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The Sea of faith. 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 

But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 

Retreating, to the breath 

Of the night-winds, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

45 



On the Shortness of Time 

Ah, love, let us be true 

To one another ! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams, 

So various, so beautiful, so new, 

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confus'd alarms of struggle and flight. 

Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

Matthew Arnold 



ON THE SHORTNESS OF TIME 

IF I could live without the thought of death. 
Forgetful of Time's waste, the soul's decay, 
I would not ask for other joy than breath 
With light and sound of birds and the sun's ray. 
I could sit on untroubled day by day 
Watching the grass grow, and the wild flowers range 
From blue to yellow and from red to grey 
In natural sequence as the seasons change. 
I could afford to wait, but for the hurt 
Of this dull tick of time which chides my ear. 
But now I dare not sit with loins ungirt 
And staff unlifted, for death stands too near. 
I must be up and doing — ay, each minute. 
The grave gives time for rest when we are in it. 

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 



46 



SOUL AND BODY 

WHERE wert thou, Soul, ere yet my body born 
Became thy dwelling-place ? Didst thou on 
earth, 
Or in the clouds, await this body's birth ? 
Or by what chance upon that winter's morn 
Didst thou this body find, a babe forlorn ? 
Didst thou in sorrow enter, or in mirth ? 
Or for a jest, perchance, to try its worth 
Thou tookest flesh, ne'er from it to be torn ? 
Nay, Soul, I will not mock thee; well I know 
Thou wert not on the earth, nor in the sky; 
For with my body's growth thou too didst grow ; 
But with that body's death wilt thou too die ? 
I know not, and thou canst not tell me, so 
In doubt we'll go together, — thou and I. 

Samuel Waddington 

THE LOST PLEIAD 

GONE, gone ! 
O, never more to cheer 
The mariner who holds his course alone 
On the Atlantic, through the weary night, 
When the stars turn to watchers and do sleep, 
Shall it appear. 

With the sweet fixedness of certain light, 
Down-shining on the shut eyes of the deep ! 

And lone. 

Where its first splendors shone. 

Shall be that pleasant company of stars : 

47 



Siva 

How should they know that death 

Such perfect beauty mars ; 

And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath, 

Fallen from on high, 

Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die — 

All their concerted springs of harmony, 

Snapp'd rudely, and the generous music gone. 

A strain — a mellow strain — 
Of wailing sweetness, fill'd the earth and sky; 
The stars lamenting in unborrow'd pain 
That one of the selectest ones must die; 
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest ! 
Alas ! 'tis ever more the destiny. 
The hope, the heart-cherish'd, is the soonest lost ; 
The flower first budded soonest feels the frost : 
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest ? 
And like the pale star shooting down the sky, 
Look they not ever brightest when they fly 
The desolate home they bless'd ? 

William Gilmore Simms 

SIVA 

[AM the God of the sensuous fire 
That molds all Nature in forms divine ; 
The symbols of death and of man's desire, 

The springs of change in the world, are mine ; 
The organs of birth and the circlet of bones, 
And the light loves carved on the temple stones. 

48 



Siva 

I am the lord of delights and pain, 

Of the pest that killeth, of friiitful joys ; 

I rule the currents of heart and vein ; 
A touch gives passion, a look destroys ; 

In the heat and cold of my lightest breath 

Is the might incarnate of Lust and Death. 

If a thousand altars stream with blood 
Of the victims slain by the chanting priest. 

Is a great God lured by the savory food ? 
I reck not of worship, or song, or feast ; 

But that millions perish, each hour that flies, 

Is the mystic sign of my sacrifice. 

Ye may plead and pray for the millions born ; 

They come like dew on the morning grass ; 
Your vows and vigils I hold in scorn, 

The stage stays never, the stages pass ; 
All life is the play of the power that stirs 
In the dance of my wanton worshipers. 

And the strong, swift river my shrine below 
It runs, like man, its unending course 

To the boundless sea from eternal snow ; 
Mine is the Fountain — and mine the Force 

That spurs all nature to ceaseless strife ; 

And my image is Death at the gates of Life. 

In many a legend and many a shape. 

In the solemn grove and the crowded street, 

I am the Slayer, whom none escape ; 

I am Death, trod under a fair girl's feet ; 

49 



Siva 

I govern the tides of the sentient sea 
That ebbs and flows to eternity. 

And the sum of the thought and the knowledge of man 
Is the secret tale that my emblems tell ; 

Do you seek God's purpose, or trace his plan ? 
Ye may read your doom in my parable : 

For the circle of life in its flower and fall 

Is the writing that runs on my temple wall. 

O race that labors, and seeks, and strives. 

With thy Faith, thy wisdom, thy hopes and fears. 

Where now is the Future of myriad lives ? 
Where now is the creed of a thousand years ? 

Far as the Western spirit may range. 

It finds but the travail of endless change. 

For the earth is fashioned by countless suns, 
And planets wander, and stars are lost. 

As the rolling flood of existence runs 
From light to shadow, from fire to frost. 

Your search is ended, ye hold the keys 

Of my inmost ancient mysteries. 

Now that your hands have lifted the veil. 

And the crowd may know what my symbols mean. 

Will not the faces of men turn pale 

At the sentence heard, and the vision seen 

Of strife and sleep, of the soul's brief hour, 

And the careless tread of unyielding Power ? 

Though the world repent of its cruel youth, 
And in age grow soft, and its hard law bend, 

50 



When We Are All Asleep 

Ye may spare or slaughter ; by rage or ruth 

All forms speed on to the still far end ; 
For the gods who have mercy, who save or bless, 
Are the visions of man in his hopefulness. 

Let my temples fall, they are dark with age ; 

Let my idols break, they have stood their day ; 
On their deep hewn stones the primeval sage 

Has figured the spells that endure alway ; 
My presence may vanish from river and grove. 
But I rule forever in Death and Love. 

Sir Alfred Lyall 

WHEN WE ARE ALL ASLEEP 

WHEN He returns, and finds the world so drear, 
All sleeping, young and old, unfair and fair, 
Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear, 
" Awaken ! " or for pity's sake forbear, 
Saying, " How shall I meet their frozen stare 
Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear ? 
How shall I comfort them in their despair. 
If they cry out < Too late, let us sleep here * ? " 
Perchance He will not wake us up, but when 
He sees us look so happy in our rest, 
Will murmur, " Poor dead women and dead men ! 
Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest. 
Wherefore wake them into life again ? 
Let them sleep on untroubled — it is best." 

Robert Buchanan 



51 



DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM 

DE mortuis nil nisi bonuin. When 
For me the end has come and I am dead, 
And little, voluble, chattering daws of men 

Peck at me curiously, let it then be said 
By some one brave enough to speak the truth. 

Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. 
Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth 

To his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song. 
And speech that rushed up hotly from the heart. 

He wrought for liberty ; till his own wound, 
(He had been stabbed) concealed with painful art 

Through wasting years, mastered him and he 
swooned. 
And sank there where you see him lying now, 
With that word Failure written on his brow. 

But say that he succeeded. If he missed 

World's honors and world's plaudits, and the wage 
Of the world's deft lackeys, still his lips were kissed 

Daily by those high angels who assuage 
The thirstings of the poets — for he was 

Born unto singing — and a burden lay 
Mightily on him, and he moaned because 

He could not rightly utter to his day 
What God taught in the night. Sometimes, natheless 

Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame 
And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress ; 

And benedictions from black pits of shame ; 
And little children's love ; and old men's prayers ; 
And a Great Hand that led him unawares. 

52 



De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum 

So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred 

With thick films — silence, for he is in his grave. 
Greatly he suffered ; greatly, too, he erred ; 

Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. 
Nor did he wait till Freedom had become 

The popular shibboleth of courtiers' lips ; 
But smote for her when God himself seemed dumb. 

And all his arching skies were in eclipse ; 
He was aweary, but he fought his fight. 

And stood for simple manhood ; and was joyed 
To see the august broadening of the light, 

And new earths heaving heavenward from the void. 
He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet — 
Plant daisies at his head and at his feet. 

Richard Realf 

Rossiter Johnson, in Lippincott'b Magazine, March, 1879 : 
Richard Realf was an English peasant, bom near Brighton, Sussex, 
in 1834. As a boy his poetic talents attracted the interest of Lady 
Byron and Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. He came to New York in 
1854 ; in 1862 he enlisted in the Northern Army ; at the close of the 
war he became a journalist. His career was now one of bitter mis- 
fortune ; his poems, thrown off as mere incidents in his newspaper 
work, have never been collected and published. They evince rare 
powers of thought, feeling, and expression. Richard Realf died, by his 
own hand, in San Francisco, in 1878, having just written the lines, 
" De mortuis nil nisi bonum." , 



53 



SOUL AND BODY 

BEFORE the beginning of years 
There came to the making of man 
Time, with a gift of tears ; 

Grief, with a glass that ran ; 
Pleasure, with sin for leaven ; 

Summer, with flowers that fell ; 
Remembrance, fallen from heaven ; 

And madness, risen from hell ; 
Strength, without hands to smite ; 

Love, that endures for a breath ; 
Night, the shadow of light ; 

And life, the shadow of death. 

And the high gods took in hand 

Fire and the falling of tears, 
And a measure of sliding sand 

From under the feet of the years, 
And froth and drift of the sea. 

And dust of the laboring earth, 
And bodies of things to be 

In the houses of death and of birth. 
And wrought with weeping and laughter, 

And fashioned with loathing and love, 
With life before and after, 

And death beneath and above, 
For a night and a day and a morrow, 

That his strength might endure for a span, 
With travail and heavy sorrow, 

The holy spirit of man. 

54 



Bubbles 

From the winds of the North and the South 

They gathered us unto strife ; 
They breathed up in his mouth, 

They filled his body with life ; 
Eyesight and speech they wrought 

For the veils of the soul therein • 
A time for labor and thought, 

A time to serve and to sin ; 
They gave him light in his ways, 

And love, and a space for delight, 
And beauty and length of days. 

And night, and sleep in the night. 
His speech is a burning fire ; 

With his lips he travaileth ; 
In his heart is a blind desire, 

In his eyes foreknowledge of death. 
He weaves, and is clothed in derision ; 

Sows, and he shall not reap ; 
His life is a watch or a vision 

Between a sleep and a sleep. 

Algernon Charles Swinburne 



BUBBLES 
I 

I STOOD on the brink in childhood, 
And watched the bubbles go 
From the rock-fretted, sunny ripple 
To the smoother tide below ; 

55 



Bubbles 

And over the white creek bottom, 

Under them every one, 
Went golden stars in the water, 

All luminous with the sun. 

But the bubbles broke on the surface ; 

And under, the stars of gold 
Broke ; and the hurrying water 

Flowed onward, swift and cold. 

II 
I stood on the brink in manhood. 

And it came to my weary brain, 
And my heart, so dull and heavy 

After the years of pain, — 

That every hollo west bubble 
Which over my life had passed 

Still into its deeper current 

Some heavenly gleam had cast ; 

That however I mocked it gayly, 
And guessed at its hollowness. 

Still shone, with each bursting bubble, 
One star in my soul the less. 

William Dean Howells 

Copyright 1886, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



56 



THE MIRAGE 

I SEE a city fair and bright, 
With glittering dome and lofty tower, 
As gliding onward through the night 
We tell the lonely midnight hour. 

I seem to see a busy throng 

Upon its dimly outlined shore ; 
I listen for a burst of song — 

I hark for plash of falling oar, 

In vain ! Eternal silence swings 
Aroimd that city's gleaming walls. 

Within it is no voice that sings, 
From out its port no echo falls. 

We draw no nearer to its gate, 

We enter not those portals fair, 
For as the hour grows chill and late 

It vanishes into the air ! 

Oh, Phantom City of the Plain, 

Whose mocking lights illusive gleam, 
Our lives are spent in quest as vain, 
We wake, and lo, 'twas all a dream ! 

VoLNEY Streamer 
Southern Pacific Railway^ November 18, 1888. 

57 



DOUBT 

^'TT^IS nature's law: that once at rest, 
X The boulder should forever lie 
Unmoved beneath the placid sky, 

Asleep upon earth's quiet breast; 

That once in motion, worlds shall sweep 

Forever on their destined way; 

That, through the night and through the day, 
Unswerved their pathways they should keep. 

And so the mind of man would cling 
Forever to its old-time faith, 
Whatever word the new age saith, 

Whatever light the new suns bring. 

Unquiet are the waves of doubt 
That toss forever round the world. 
On which our restless ships are whirled 

As tides flow in and tides flow out. 

But rotting on the oozy strands, 

Our ships would crumble and decay. 
Did not the waves about them play. 

And sweep them off to other lands. 

MiNOT JuDSON Savage 

Copyright 1882, by George H. Ellis 

58 



A SADDUCEE'S VIEW 

The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say there is no 
resurrection.— St. Matthew, xxii, 23. 

PRIMITIVE man saw the reflection of his face in 
streams or crystals; he heard the echo of his voice 
returned from cliffs ; he dreamed dreams into which the 
living and the dead came and went without distinction; 
little wonder that he began to believe in " doubles," 
that he imagined himself to be possessed of a " soul," 
separable from his body and surviving his body's death. 
Nor were moral feelings wanting in support of his 
faith. Many a good man's life was miserable ; many 
another life, happy enough, was abruptly ended at its 
very dawn. Surely, he thought, there must be another 
state of being to redress the wrongs and hardships of 
this. 

But with advancing knowledge the old faith retires. 
Immanence is the key-thought of modem philosophy. 
Man is no longer regarded as two beings, but as one. 
Nature is viewed as moving by inherent, not external 
forces : the attempt to account for Nature by Super- 
nature is detected as verbal merely — no genuine 
thought standing behind the words. It is felt that 
whatever may be the link between mind and body, if 
indeed they be not twin manifestations of the same 
thing, nothing is gained by positing a " spirit " in ex- 
planation. 

The ancient faith in the immortal « soul " is under- 
mined by the progress of knowledge at other points. 

59 



A Sadducee's View 

Man has learned to parry the evil forces of nature ; 
pain is abolished by anesthetics ; disease is not simply 
ousted by scores of new weapons, it is in many cases 
absolutely denied any foothold whatever. Thanks, 
also, to new knowledge, positive pleasures abound and 
superabound where of old they were unknown and 
unimagined. Comforts, luxuries, ministries to the best 
tastes and highest feelings, are fast passing from the 
few to the whole body of the people. Man is to-day 
the master of his fate as never before. Life lengthens 
at the same time that it becomes better worth having 
while it lasts. When one sees a youth cut off on the 
very threshold of his career, there is a suggestion that 
the broken arc of his life may be prolonged in another 
state of being. But when one sees an old man who has 
lived according to knowledge, with faculties fading as 
gradually as they awakened eighty or ninety years 
before, one is looking not at a broken arc, but at a full 
circle — whose completed round has no suggestion of 
aught beyond the grave. It is this old man, not the 
youth prematurely cut off, who is the type of the com- 
ing man — who will rejoice that he was born, who, 
happy and contented, partly by virtue of the moral 
struggle which will always remain, will need no " con- 
solations " and ask none, resigning Great Expectations 
of life beyond the stars as proper only to the childhood 
of the race. He will need no Faith, he will See : he 
will lean on no Hope, he will Have. 

Unknown. 



60 



FAITH 

THERE is a startling legend that is known 
To Spanish scholars : how the fertile land 
For years was ravaged by a robber band, 
Led by a knight with visor ever down ; 

And how, at last, when he was overthrown. 
The shape which made so desperate a stand 
And quivered still, was found to be, when scann'd, 

A suit of armor, empty heel to crown. 

Naught fights like Emptiness. Beneath the veil 

Of Islam's warlike Prophet, from Bagdad 
To Roncevaux, it made the nations quail; 

And once, as Templar and Crusader clad. 

It shook the world. Ev'n now. Faith's empty mail 
Still writhes and struggles with the life it had. 

Eugene Lee-Hamilton 

Copyright 1894, by Stone & Kimball 

A RECUSANT 

THE Church stands there beyond the orchard- 
blooms; 
How yearningly I gaze upon its spire ! 
Lifted mysterious through the twilight glooms. 

Dissolving in the sunset's golden fire. 

Or dim as slender incense morn by mom 

Ascending to the blue and open sky. 

6i 



Beyond 

Forever when my heart feels most forlorn 

It murmurs to me with a weary sigh, 
How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray 

With all the others whom we love so well ! 
All disbelief and doubt might pass away. 

All peace float to us with its Sabbath bell. 
Conscience replies, There is but one good rest. 
Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's pure breast. 

James Thomsoit 

BEYOND 

THERE'S a fancy some lean to and others hate — 
That, when this life is ended begins 
New work for the soul in another state, 

Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins ; 
Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, 

Repeat in large what they practiced in small, 
Through life after life in unlimited series ; 
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all. 

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 

By the means of Evil that Good is best. 
And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's 
serene — 

When our faith in the same has stood the test — 
Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, 

The uses of labor are surely done ; 
There remaineth a rest for the people of God : 

And I have had troubles enough, for one. 

Robert Browning 

62 



Light on the Cloud 



There is nothing either good or bad, 
But thinking makes it so. 

Shakspere 

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear f 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see ? 
He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know f 

Psalm XCIV 

To hope and not to be impatient is really to believe. 

George Meredith 



DOUBT 

THEY bade me east the thing away, 
They pointed to my hands all bleeding, 
They listened not to all my pleading ; 
The thing I meant I could not say : 
I knew that I should rue the day 
If once I cast that thing away. 

I grasped it firm, and bore the pain ; 
The thorny husks I stripped and scattered ; 
If I could reach its heart, what mattered 

If other men saw not my gain. 

Or even if I should be slain ? 

I knew the risks ; I chose the pain. 

Oh, had I cast that thing away, 
1 had not found what most I cherish, 
A faith without which I should perish, 
The faith which, like a kernel, lay 
Hid in the husks which on that day 
My instinct would not throw away ! 

Helen Hunt Jackson 

Copyright 1886, by Roberts Brothers 



6s 



THE SACRED MYTHS 

We read the pagans' sacred books with profit and 
delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, 
and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the 
beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these 
records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and 
efPorts stained with tears of great and tender souls, 
who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to 
answer the eternal questions of the Whence and 
Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of 
shattered glass, a mirror that would in every breath 
reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self. 

These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and 
tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored 
by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn 
of birth and death's sad night. They clothed even 
the stars with passion, and gave to gods the virtues, 
faults, and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the 
winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and 
streams, and springs — the mountains, woods, and per- 
fumed dells, were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. 
They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous 
desire ; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the 
throne and home of love ; filled Autumn's arms with 
sun-kissed grapes and gathered sheaves ; and pictured 
Winter as a weak old king, who felt, like Lear, upon 
his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, 
though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages, 

66 



The Pantheist's Song of Immortality 

and in countless ways, enriched the heart, and kindled 
thought. But if the world were taught that all these 
things are true, and all inspired of God, and that 
eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares 
deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable- 
World will lose its beauty and become a scorned and 
hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man. 
Robert G. Ingersoll 

Prose Poems 

Copyright 1884, by C. P. FarreU 



THE PANTHEIST'S SONG OF IMMORTALITY 

BRING snow-white lilies, pallid heart-flushed roses. 
En wreathe her brow with heavy scented flowers; 
In soft undreaming sleep her head reposes. 
While, unregretted, pass the sunlit hours. 

Few sorrows did she know — and all are over ; 

A thousand joys — but they are all forgot ; 
Her life was one fair dream of friend and lover, 

And were they false — ah well, she knows it not. 

Look in her face and lose thy dread of dying ; 

Weep not that rest will come, that toil will cease ; 
Is it not well to lie as she is lying, 

In utter silence, and in perfect peace ? 

Canst thou repine that sentient days are numbered ? 

Death is unconscious Life, that waits for birth ; 
So didst thou live, while yet thine embryo slumbered, 

Senseless, unbreathing, even as heaven and earth. 

67 



The Pantheist's Song of Immortality 

Then shrink no more from Death, though Life be glad- 
ness, 

Nor seek him, restless in thy lonely pain ; 
The law of joy ordains each hour of sadness, 

And firm or frail, thou canst not live in vain. 

What though thy name by no sad lips be spoken. 
And no fond heart shall keep thy memory green ? 

Thou yet shalt leave thine own enduring token, 
For earth is not as though thou ne'er hadst been. 

See yon broad current, hasting to the ocean. 
Its ripples glorious in the western red : 

Each wavelet passes, trackless ; yet its motion 
Has changed for evermore the river bed. 

Ah, wherefore weep, although the form and fashion 
Of what thou seemest fades like sunset flame ? 

The uncreated Source of toil and passion 

Through everlasting change abides the same. 

Yes, thou shalt die ; but these almighty forces, 
That meet to form thee, live for evermore ; 

They hold the sims in their eternal courses, 
And shape the tiny sand-grains on the shore. 

Be calmly glad, thine own true kindred seeing 
In fire and storm, in flowers with dew impearled ; 

Rejoice in thine imperishable being. 

One with the essence of the boundless world. 

Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden 

68 



THE BEAUTIFUL CITY 

THE Beautiful City ! forever 
Its rapturous praises resound ; 
We fain would behold it — but never 

A glimpse of its glory is found : 
We slacken our lips at the tender 

White breasts of our mothers to hear 
Of its marvelous beauty and splendor ; — 
We see — but the gleam of a tear ! 



Yet never the story may tire 

First graven on symbols of stone — 
Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus, 

And parchment, and scattered and blown 
By the winds of the tongues of all Nations, 

Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled 
Down the rack of a hundred translations, 

From the earliest lisp of the world. 

We compass the earth and the ocean. 

From the Orient's uttermost light. 
To where the last ripple of motion 

Lips hem of the skirt of the night, — 
But The Beautiful City evades us — 

No spire of it glints in the sun — 
No glad-bannered battlement shades us 

When all our long journey is done. 
Copyright 1887, by James Whitcomb Riley 

69 



The Beautiful City 

Where lies it ? We question and listen ; 

We lean from the mountain, or mast, 
And see but dull earth, or the glisten 

Of seas inconceivably vast ; 
The dust of the one blurs our vision — 

The glare of the other our brain, 
Nor city nor island elysian 

In all of the land or the main ! 

We kneel in dim fanes where the thunders 

Of organs tumultuous roll, 
And the longing heart listens and wonders, 

And the eyes look aloft from the soul, 
But the chanson grows fainter and fainter, 

Swoons wholly away and is dead ; 
And our eyes only reach where the painter 

Has dabbled a saint overhead. 

The Beautiful City ! O Mortal, 

Fare hopefully on in thy quest, 
Pass down through the green grassy portal 

That leads to the Valley of Rest, 
There first passed the One who, in pity 

Of all thy great yearning, awaits 
To point out The Beautiful City, 

And loosen the trump at the gates. 

James Whitcomb Riley 



70 



BEHIND THE VEIL 

THE wish that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul ? 

Are God and Nature then at strife, 

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life ; 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope through darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

" So careful of the type ? " But no. 

From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, " A thousand types are gone 

I care for nothing, all shall go. 

71 



Behind the Veil 

«* Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, i bring to death : 
The spirit does but mean the breath : 

I know no more." And he, shall he, 

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair. 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer. 

Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law, — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed, — 

Who loved, who suffered countless ills. 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust. 

Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 

No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime. 
That tear each other in their slime. 

Were mellow music matched with him. 

O life as futile, then, as frail ! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 
What hope of answer, or redress ? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 

Alfred, Lord Tenny80n 

In Memoriam 



72 



OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 

I ASSURE you in all earnestness, speaking as an 
idealist, as one who longs to have men recognize 
the spiritual order, to believe in the supremacy of the 
good in this our world, to rise above sense, and to feel 
secure of the rationality of the universe, — speaking 
thus, I still regard as one of the most lamentable and 
disheartening features in our modern life the dreary 
opposition between those who, studying the order of 
nature as science shows it, remain agnostic about the 
spiritual realities of the world, and those who, on the 
other hand, believing, as they say, in a divine order, 
remain gently optimistic, and refuse to look at the 
woes and horrors of the world of Darwin and science, 
because forsooth, since the Lord reigns, all must be 
right with the world. Thus on the one hand we have 
a romantic idealism that loves with false liberalism, to 
cheapen religious faith by ignoring all the graver 
dogmas of the traditional creeds, that invents mean- 
while social Utopias, that denies the profound way- 
wardness and wickedness of human nature, and that 
refuses to grapple by the throat the real evils of life; 
while on the other hand we have an agnosticism that 
refuses to believe in the apiritual, because once for all 
there is so much mischief in the phenomenal order of 

73 



The Spectrum 

nature. A genuine synthesis of this optimism and its 
opposing pessimism, a spiritual idealism that does not 
deny the reality and the gravity of evil, a religion 
that looks forward to the day of the Lord as to some- 
thing very great and therefore very serious, and that 
accepts life as something valuable enough to be tragic 
— this is what we need. Josiah Royce 

The spirit of modern philosophy 

Copyright 1892, by Josiah Royce 



THE SPECTRUM 

HOW many colors do we see set, 
Like rings upon God's finger ? Some say three, 
Some four, some six, some seven. All agree 
To left of red, to right of violet, 
Waits darkness deep as night and black as jet. 
And so we know what Noah saw we see, 
Nor less nor more — of God's emblazonry 
A shred — a sign of glory known not yet. 
If red can glide to yellow, green to blue, 
What joys may yet await our wider eyes 
When we rewake upon a wider shore ! 
What deep pulsations exquisite and new ! 
What keener, swifter raptures may surprise 
Men born to see the rainbow and no more ! 

Cosmo Monkhouse 



74 



THERE IS A WOUND WITHIN ME 

THERE is a wound within me, 'tis a wound 
That lies too deep for tears, and many a while, 
While that is around me seems to smile. 
Within my heart of hearts a knell doth sound. 
Not of this world ; a cloud dark and profound 
Is o'er me, and though brighter thoughts beguile. 
And, like the sun, behind a cloudy pile. 
Bright gleams from One beyond that cloud have bound, 
Yet 'tis a cloud, for I have pierced deep 
The side of One that must be All in All. 
In this dread calm, if unto Thee I call, 
'Tis not that Thou my wounded soul wouldst steep 
With aught of gladness ; but that I, through Thee, 
May daily put me on more deep humility. 

Isaac Williams 
The Golden Valley 

HUMAN BETTERMENT 

THAT man, as a " political animal," is susceptible 
of a vast amount of improvement, by education, 
by instruction, and by the application of his intelligence 
to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his higher 
needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. But, so long 
as he remains liable to error, intellectual or moral ; so 
long as he is compelled to be perpetually on guard against 
the cosmic forces, whose ends are not his ends, without 
and within himself ; so long as he is haunted by inex- 
pugnable memories and hopeless aspirations ; as long 

75 



Brahma 

as the recognition of his intellectual limitations forces 
him to acknowledge his incapacity to penetrate the mys- 
tery of existence ; the prospect of attaining untroubled 
happiness, or of a state which can, even remotely, de- 
serve the title of perfection, appears to me as mislead- 
ing an illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of 
poor humanity. And there have been many of them. 
That which lies before the human race is a constant 
struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to a State 
of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity ; in 
which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civili- 
zation, capable of maintaining and constantly improv- 
ing itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have 
entered so far upon its downward course that the 
cosmic process resumes its sway ; and, once more, the 
State of Nature prevails over the surface of our planet. 
Thomas Henry Huxley 

Evolution and Ethics 



BRAHMA 

IF the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain thinks he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

Far or forgot to me is near, 

Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
The vanished gods to me appear. 

And one to me are shame and fame. 

76 



Awakening 

They reckon ill who leave me out. 

When me they fly, I am the wings ; 
I am the doubter and the doubt, 

And I the hymn the Brahman sings. 

The strong gods pine for my abode, 
And pine in vain the sacred seven ; 

But thou, meek lover of the good. 

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



AWAKENING 

WITH brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod, 
With eye so practiced in each form around, — 
And all forms mean, — to glance above the ground 
Irks it, each day of many days we plod. 
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road ; 
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound 
Of living streams, an odor, a flower crowned 
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod. 
And we awake. O joy of deep amaze ! 
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand, 

We hear the voices of the morning seas, 
And earnest prophesyings in the land. 
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze 
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. 

Edward Dowden 



77 



THE CIRCUIT OF BEING 

THE snowflake that glistens at morn on Kailasa, 
Dissolved by the sunbeams, descends to the 
plain ; 
Then, mingling with Gimga, it floats to the ocean, 
And lost in its waters returns not again. 

On the roseleaf at sunrise bright glistens the dewdrop 
That in vapor exhaled falls in nourishing rain; 

Then in rills back to Gunga through green fields 
meanders, 
Till onward it flows to the ocean again. 

A snowflake still whitens the peak of Kailasa, 

But the snowflake of yesterday flows to the main ; 

At dawning a dewdrop still hangs on the roseleaf, 
But the dewdrop of yesterday comes not again. 

The soul that is freed from the bondage of nature 
Escapes from illusions of joy and of pain; 

And, pure as the flame that is lost in the sunbeams, 
Ascends unto God, and returns not again. 

It comes not and goes not, it comes not again. 

Unknown 

Credited to a missionary in Northern India 

SUPERSTITION IS PRIMITIVE SCIENCE 

WHEN people like the American Indians or the 
African negroes believe that the air around 
them is swarming with invisible spirits, this is not non- 

78 



Superstition is Primitive Science 

8ense. They mean that life is full of accidents which 
do not happen of themselves; and when in their rude 
philosophy they say the spirits make them happen, this 
is finding the most distinct causes which their minds 
can understand. 

We know how strong our own desire is to accoimt 
for everything. The desire is as strong among barbar- 
ians, and accordingly they devise such explanations as 
satisfy their minds. But they are apt to go a stage 
further, and their explanations turn into the form of 
stories with names of places and persons, thus becom- 
ing full-made myths. Educated men do not now con- 
sider it honest to make fictitious history in this way, 
but people of untrained mind, in what is called the 
myth-making stage, which has lasted on from the sav- 
age period, and has not quite disappeared among our- 
selves, have no such scruples about converting their 
guesses at what may have happened, into the most life- 
like stories of what they say did happen. 

The notion of soul or spirit helped men on to the 
notion of cause. When the cause of anything presents 
itself to the ancient mind as a kind of soul or spirit, 
then the cause or spirit of summer, sleep, hope, justice, 
comes easily to look like a person. 

The African or Hindu explains that he believes a 
stock or stone to be a receptacle in which a divine 
spirit has for a time embodied itself. 

Edward B. Tylor 

Anthropology 



79 



PROSPICE 

FEAR death ? to feel the fog in my throat, 
The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe ; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear, in a visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go, 
For the journey is done and the summit attain'd. 

And the barriers fall, 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gain'd, 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again. 

And with God be the rest. 

Robert Browning 

80 



OUR SHARE OF NIGHT TO BEAR 

OUR share of night to bear, 
Our share of morning, 
Our blank in bliss to fill, 
Our blank in scorning. 

Here a star, and there a star. 

Some lose their way. 
Here a mist, and there a mist, 

Afterwards — day ! 

Emily Dickinson 

Copyright 1890, by Roberts Brothers 



EXPLANATION, NOT ATTACK 

NO one of any sense or knowledge now thinks the 
Christian religion had its origin in deliberate 
imposture. The modern freethinker does not attack 
it, he explains it. And what is more, he explains it 
by referring its growth to the better, and not to the 
worse, part of human nature. He traces it to men's 
cravings for a higher morality. He finds its source 
in their aspirations after nobler expression of that feel- 
ing for the incommensurable things, which is in truth 
under so many varieties of inwoven pattern the com- 
mon universal web of religious faith. 

John Morley 
On Compromise 

8i 



THE IMMORTAL MIND 

WHEN coldness wraps this sufPering clay, 
Ah, whither strays the immortal mind ? 
It cannot die, it cannot stay, 

But leaves its darkened dust behind, 
Then, unembodied, doth it trace 

By steps each planet's heavenly way ? 
Or fill at once the realms of space, 
A thing of eyes, that all survey? 

Eternal, boundless, undecayed, 

A thought unseen, but seeing all. 
All, all in earth or skies displayed. 

Shall it survey, shall it recall ; 
Each fainter trace that memory holds 

So darkly of departed years. 
In one broad glance the soul beholds, 

And all that was at once appears. 

Before creation peopled earth. 

Its eyes shall roll through chaos back ; 
And where the farthest heaven had birth, 

The spirit trace its rising track. 
And where the future mars or makes. 

Its glance dilate o'er all to be, 
While sun is quenched or system breaks, 

Fixed in its own eternity. 

82 



The Rise of the Doctrine of Evolution 

Above or love, hope, hate, or fear, 

It lives all passionless and pure : 
An age shall fleet like earthly year ; 

Its years as moments shall endure. 
Away, away, without a wing, 

O'er all, through all, its thoughts shall fly, — 
A nameless and eternal thing. 

Forgetting what it was to die. 

George Gordon, Lord Byron 



THE RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLU- 
TION 
OUR language, our institutions, our beliefs, our 
ideals, whatever, in short, is mightiest and 
dearest in all our world, all this together is a slow and 
hard-won growth, nobody's arbitrary invention, no gift 
from above, no outcome of a social compact, no imme- 
diate expression of reason, but the slowly formed con- 
cretion of ages of blind effort, unconscious, but wise in 
its unconsciousness, often selfish, but humane even in its 
selfishness. The ideals win the battle of life by the 
secret connivance, as it were, of numberless seeming- 
ly un-ideal forces. Climate, hunger, commerce, au- 
thority, superstition, war, cruelty, toil, greed, compro- 
mise, tradition, conservatism, loyalty, sloth, — all these 
cooperate, through countless ages, with a hundred 
other discernible tendencies, to build up civilization. 
And civilization itself is, in consequence, a much deeper 
thing than appears on the surface of the consciousness. 

83 



The Rise of the Doctrine of Evolution 

Instinct has a larger share in it than reasoning. Faith 
counts for more in it than insight. It embodies in 
concrete form that deeper self that the idealists loved 
to talk about. Your deeper self is plainly a sort of 
abstract and epitome of the whole history of humanity. 
A new and wiser form of the doctrine of metempsy- 
chosis occurs to you. The humanity that toiled and 
bled and worshiped of old has transmitted to you, in 
your language and institutions, in the ancient lore that 
your fathers teach you, in your prejudices, in your 
faults, in your conscience, in your religion, the very 
soul of its agony and of its glory. You can read in 
history your personal instincts written in the language 
of evolution. You can watch the human spirit in its 
growth with a deeper sense of the " That art Thou " 
than you had ever before possessed. The metaphors 
of your heathen ancestors are crystallized in every 
word that you utter. The very horrors of their super- 
stitions are the true though humble origin of your 
loftiest and most sacred devotions. Humanity never 
really forsakes its past. The days of mankind are 
bound each to each in mutual piety. 

JOSIAH ROYCE 

The spirit of modem philosophy 
Copyright 1892, by Josiah Royce 



84 



LIKE ONE WHO WALKETH IN A PLENTE* 
OUS LAND 

LIKE one who walketh in a plenteous land, 
By flowing waters, under shady trees, 
Through sunny meadows, where the summer bees 
Feed in the thyme and clover ; on each hand 
Fair gardens lying, where of fruit and flower 
The bounteous season hath poured out its dower : 
Where saffron skies roof in the earth with light. 
And birds sing thankfully toward Heaven, while he 
With a sad heart walks through this jubilee, 
Beholding how beyond this happy land, 
Stretches a thirsty desert of gray sand. 
Where all the air is one thick, leaden blight, 
Where all things dwarf and dwindle, — so walk I, 
Through my rich, present life, to what beyond doth lie. 
Frances Anne Kemble 



LIFE 

LIFE ! I know not what thou art, 
But know that thou and I must part 
And when, or how, or where we met, 
I own to me's a secret yet. 
But this I know : when thou art fled, 
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, 
No clod so valueless shall be 
As all that then remains of me. 

85 



Life 

Oh, whither, whither dost thou fly, 
Where bend unseen thy trackless course, 
And in this strange divorce. 
Ah, tell me where I must seek this compound I ? 

To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, 
From whence thy essence came, 
Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed 
From matter's base encumbering weed ? 
Or dost thou, hid from sight. 
Wait like some spell-bound knight. 
Through blank oblivious years the appointed hour 
To break thy trance and reassume thy power ? 
Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be ? 
Oh, say, what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee ? 
Life ! We've been long together 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
Then steal away, give little warning. 
Choose thine own time ; 
Say not Good-night — ^but in some brighter clime 
Bid me Good-morning. 

Anxa Letitia Barbauld 



S6 



DISCOURSE OF MARCUS AURELIUS 
^ ^ A RT thou in love with men's praises, get thee 

J~\, into the very soul of them, and see ! — what 
judges they be, even in those matters which concern 
themselves. Wouldst thou have their praises after 
death, bethink thee, that they who shall come hereafter, 
and with whom thou wouldst survive by thy great 
name, will be but as these, whom here thou hast found 
so hard to live with. For, of a truth, his soul who 
is aflutter upon renown after death, presents not this 
aright to itself, that of all whose memory he would 
have, each one will likewise quickly depart, until 
memory herself be put out, as she journeys on by 
means of such as are themselves on the wing but for a 
while, and are extinguished in their turn. Making so 
much of those thou wilt never see ! It is as if thou 
wouldst have had those who were before thee discourse 
fair things concerning thee. 

« To him, indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by 
true doctrine, that well-worn sentence of Homer suffic- 
eth, to guard him against regret and fear. 
Like the race of leaves 

The race of man is : — 

The wind in autumn straws 

The earth with old leaves : then the spring the woods 

with new endows — 

Leaves ! little leaves ! — thy children, thy flatterers, 

thine enemies ! Leaves in the wind, those who would 

devote thee to darkness, who scorn or miscall thee 

87 



Pro 



ress 



here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast 
them. For all these, and the like of them, are born in- 
deed in the spring season — and soon a wind hath scat- 
tered them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself 
again with another generation of leaves. And what is 
common to all of them is but the littleness of their 
lives : and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these 
things should continue for ever. In a little while thine 
eyes also will be closed, and he on whom thou per- 
chance hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon 
another." 

Walter Pater 
Marius the Epicurean 

PROGRESS 

INSECT and reptile, fish and bird and beast, 
Cast their worn robes aside fresh robes to don ; 

Tree, flower, and moss, put new year's raiment on ; 
Each natural type, the greatest as the least. 
Renews its vesture when the use hath ceased. 

How should man's spirit keep in unison 

With the world's law of outgrowth, save it won 
New robes and ampler as its girth increased ? 
Quit shrunken creed, and dwarfed philosophy I 

Let gently die an art's decaying fire ! 
Work on the ancient lines, but yet be free 

To leave and frame anew, if God inspire ! 
The planets change their surface as they roll : 
The force that binds the spheres must bind the soul. 

Henry G. Hewlett 

88 



THE SPIDER 

A NOISELESS patient spider, 
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood 

isolated, 
Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding. 
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of 

itself, 
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 
And you O my soul where you stand, 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space. 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the 

spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you need be formed, till the ductile 

anchor hold, 
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, 

O my soul. 

Walt Whitman 

Copyright 1881, by Walt Whitman 

HISTORY'S LESSON OF PATIENCE 

WE lose the reality of history, we fail to recog- 
nize one of the most striking aspects of human 
affairs, and above all we miss that most invaluable 
practical lesson, the lesson of patience, unless we re- 
member that the great changes of history took up long 
periods of time which, when measured by the little life 
of man, are almost colossal, like the vast changes of 
geology. We know how long it takes before a species 
of plant or animal disappears in face of a better adapted 

89 



Evarra and His Gods 

species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and institutions, 
have always lingered just as long in face of their suc- 
cessors, and the competition is not less keen nor less pro- 
longed, because it is for one or other inevitably destined 
to be hopeless. History, like geology, demands the 
use of the imagination, and in proportion as the exer- 
cise of the historic imagination is vigorously performed 
in thinking of the past, will be the breadth of our con- 
ception of the changes which the future has in store 
for us, as well as of the length of time and the magni- 
tude of effort required for their perfect achievement. 

John Morley 
On Compromise 



EVARRA AND HIS GODS 

Read here, 

This is the story of Evarra — man — 

Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 
Because the city gave him of her gold, 
Because the caravans brought turquoises, 
Because his life was sheltered by the King, 
So that no man should maim him, none should steal, 
Or break his rest with babble in the streets 
When he was weary after toil, he made 
An image of his God in gold and pearl, 
With turquoise diadem and human eyes, 
A wonder in the sunshine, known afar 
And worshiped by the King ; but, drunk with pride, 
Because the city bowed to him for God, 

90 



Evarra and His Gods 

He wrote above the shrine : " Thus Gods are made^ 

And whoso makes them otherwise shall die" 

And all the city praised him. . . . Then he died. 

Read here the story of Evarra — man — 

Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 
Because his city had no wealth to give, 
Because the caravans were spoiled afar, 
Because his life was threatened by the King, 
So that all men despised him in the streets, 
He hacked the living rock, with sweat and tears. 
And reared a God against the morning-gold, 
A terror in the sunshine, seen afar. 
And worshiped by the King ; but, drunk with pride, 
Because the city fawned to bring him back. 
He carved upon the plinth : " Thus Gods are made, 
And whoso makes them otherwise shall die." 
And all the people praised him. . . Then he died. 

Read here the story of Evarra — man — 

Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 
Because he lived among a simple folk, 
Because his village was between the hills, 
Because he smeared his cheeks with blood of ewes, 
He cut an idol from a fallen pine, 
Smeared blood upon its cheeks, and wedged a shell 
Above its brows for eyes, and gave it hair 
Of trailing moss, and plaited straw for crown. 
And all the village praised him for his craft. 
And brought him butter, honey, milk, and curds. 

91 



b S f,: " 



Evarra and His Gods 

Wherefore, because the shoutings drove him mad, 
He scratched upon that log : " Thus Gods are madef 
And whoso makes them otherwise shall die.^' 
And all the people praised him. . . Then he died. 

Read here the story of Evarra — man — 

Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 

Because his God decreed one clot of blood 

Should swerve one hair's-breadth from the pulse's 

path, 
And chafe his brain, Evarra mowed alone. 
Rag-wrapped, among the cattle in the fields, 
Counting his fingers, jesting with the trees. 
And mocking at the mist, until his God 
Drove him to labor. Out of dung and horns 
Dropped in the mire he made a monstrous God, 
Abhorrent, shapeless, crowned with plantain tufts. 
And when the cattle lowed at twilight time. 
He dreamed it was the clamor of lost crowds, 
And howled among the beasts : " Thus Gods are 

made, 
And whoso makes them otherwise shall die.'* 
Thereat the cattle bellowed. . . Then he died. 

Yet at the last he came to Paradise, 

And found his own four Gods, and that he wrote ; 

And marveled, being very near to God, 

What oaf on earth had made his toil God's law, 

Till God said, mocking: "Mock not. These be thine." 

Then cried Evarra : " I have sinned ! " — " Not so. 

92 



Thy Joy in Sorrow 

If thou hadst written otherwise, thy Gods 
Had rested in the mountain and the mine, 
And I were poorer by four wondrous Gods, 
And thy more wondrous law, Evarra. Thine, 
Servant of shouting crowds and lowing kine." 
Thereat with laughing mouth, but tear-wet eyes, 
Evarra cast his Gods from Paradise. 

This is the story of Evarra — man — 
Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 

RuDYARD Kipling 



THY JOY IN SORROW 

GIVE me thy joy in sorrow, gracious Lord, 
And sorrow's self shall like to joy appear ! 
Although the world should waver in its sphere 
I tremble not if Thou thy peace afford ; 
But, Thou withdrawn, I am but as a chord 
That vibrates to the pulse of hope and fear : 
Nor rest I more than harps which to the air 
Must answer when we place their timeful board 
Against the blast, which thrill unmeaning woe 
Even in their sweetness. So no earthly wing 
E'er sweeps me but to sadden. Oh, place Thou 
My heart beyond the world's sad vibrating — 
And where but in Thyself ? Oh, circle me. 
That I may feel no touches save of Thee. 

Chauncy Hare Townshend 



93 



THE NEW BIBLE 

THUS, at last, out of the old conception of our 
Bible as a collection of oracles — a mass of en- 
tangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling interpreta- 
tions, which have given to the world long and weary 
ages of " hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness " ; 
of f etichism, subtlety, and pomp ; of tyranny, blood- 
shed, and solemnly constituted imposture ; of every- 
thing which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred — has 
been gradually developed through the centuries, by 
the labors, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a 
long succession of men of God, the conception of it as 
a sacred literature — a growth only possible under that 
divine light which the various orbs of science have 
done so much to bring into the mind and heart and 
soul of man — a revelation, not of the Fall of Man, 
but of the Ascent of Man — an exposition, not of tem- 
porary dogmas and observances, but of the Eternal 
Law of Righteousness — the one upward path for indi- 
viduals and for nations. No longer an oracle, good 
for the " lower orders " to accept, but to be quietly 
sneered at by " the enlightened " ; no longer a fetich, 
whose defenders must become persecutors, or recon- 
cilers, or " apologists " ; but a most fruitful fact, 
which religion and science may accept as a source of 

strength to both. 

Andrew Dickson White 

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 

Copyright 1896, by D. Appleton & Co. 

94 



BENEATH THIS STARRY ARCH 

BENEATH this starry arch 
Naught resteth or is still ; 
But all things hold their march, 
As if by one great will : 
Moves one, move all : hark to the footfall ! 
On, on, for ever I 

Yon sheaves were once but seed ; 

Will ripens into deed ; 

As cave-drops swell the streams. 

Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams ; 

And sorrow tracketh wrong. 

As echo follows song : 

On, on, for ever ! 

By night, like stars on high, 

The Hours reveal their train ; 
They whisper and go by : 
I never watch in vain. 
Moves one, move all : hark to the footfall ! 
On, on, for ever ! 

They pass the cradle-head. 
And there a promise shed ; 
They pass the moist new grave, 
And bid rank verdure wave ; 
They bear through every clime 
The harvests of all time. 
On, on, for ever ! 

Harriet Martineau 

95 



THE MEMORY OF AGRICOLA 

TACITUS, the historian, thus concludes his life of 
Agricola, the Roman general, whose son-in-law 
he was : 

" If there be any mansion for the souls of the right- 
eous ; if, as wise men think, great souls be not ex- 
tinguished with the body, mayest thou rest in peace ; 
and summon us, thy family, from unavailing regret 
and effeminate sorrow to the contemplation of those 
virtues of thine upon which it is not right to bestow 
either grief or tears. Let us honor thee rather with 
our admiration than with our short-lived encomiums, and 
if nature allow it, with our imitation. This is true re- 
spect, this is the pious duty of all who are most inti- 
mately connected with thee. To thy daughter also, 
and to thy wife, I should enjoin this, so to revere the 
memory of the father and of the husband that they may 
cherish within their hearts all his words and deeds, and 
retain the form and features of his mind rather than of 
his person. Not that any restriction be put upon 
statues which may be made of brass, or marble, but 
because these, like the human face itself, are frail and 
perishable, while the form of the mind is eternal. All 
that we have loved in Agricola, all that we have ad- 
mired, still remains, and will continue to remain pre- 
served in the minds of men in the succession of ages to 
remotest posterity." 

96 



TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE 

FROM all the rest I single out you, having a mes- 
sage for you, 
Y«»u are to die — ^let others tell you what they please, I 

cannot prevaricate, 
I am exact and merciless, but I love you, there is no 
escape for you. 

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it, 
I do not argue, I bend my head close, and half en- 
velop it, 
I sit quietly by, I remain faithful, 
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor, 
I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual bodily. 
That is eternal, you yourself will surely escape. 
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. 

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for-directions, 
Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence, you smile. 
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick. 
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the 

weeping friends, I am with you, 
I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be com- 
miserated, 
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you. 

Walt Whitman 

Copyright 1881, by Walt Whitman 

97 



IMMORTALITY 

SO when the old delight is born anew, 
And God re-animates the early bliss, 

Seems it not all as one first trembling kiss 
Ere soul knew soul with whom she has to do ? 

O nights how desolate, O days how few, 

O death in life, if life be this, be this ! 

O weigh'd alone as one shall win or miss 
The faint eternity which shines therethro* ! 

Lo, all that age is as a speck of sand 
Lost on the long beach where the tides are free. 

And no man metes it in his hollow hand 
Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be j 

At ebb it lies forgotten on the land. 
And at full tide forgotten in the sea. 

Frederic William Henry Myers 

EVIL IS NECESSARY 

EVIL is necessary. If it did not exist, the good 
would not exist. Evil is the unique reason for 
the good's being. What would courage be far from 
peril, and what pity without pain ? What would be- 
come of devotion and sacrifice if happiness were uni- 
versal ? It is because of evil and suffering that the 
earth may be inhabited and that life is worth living. 
For every vice that you destroy there is a correspond- 
ing virtue that perishes with it. 

Anatole France 

98 



THE TOUCH OF LIFE 

I SAW a circle in a garden sit 
Of dainty dames and solemn cavaliers, 
Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit, 

And at the carrion worm some burst in tears : 
And all, as envying the abhorred estate 

Of empty shades and disembodied elves, 
Under the laughing stars, early and late. 

Sat shamefast at their birth and at themselves. 

The keeper of the house of life is fear ; 
In the rent lion is the honey found 
By him that rent it ; out of stony ground 

The toiler, in the morning of the year, 
Beholds the harvest of his grief abound 

And the green corn put forth the tender ear. 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

RATIONALISM 

THE word "Rationalism" has the misfortune, 
shared by most words in this gray world, of 
being somewhat equivocal. This evil may be over- 
come by careful preliminary definition ; but Mr. Lecky 
does not supply this, and the original specific applica- 
tion of the word to a particular phase of Biblical inter- 
pretation seems to have clung about his use of it with 
a misleading e£Pect. Through some parts of his book 
("The Influence of Rationalism") he appears to re- 
gard the grand characteristic of modern thought and 
civilization, compared with ancient, as a radiation in 

99 



A Chrysalis 

the first instance from a change in religious concep- 
tions. The supremely important fact, that the reduc- 
tion of all phenomena within the sphere of established 
law, which carries as a consequence the rejection of 
the miraculous, has its determining current in the de- 
velopment of physical science, seems to have engaged 
comparatively little of his attention ; at least, he gives 
it no prominence. The great conception of universal 
regular sequence, without partiality and without ca- 
price — the conception which is the most potent force at 
work in the modification of our faith, and of the prac- 
tical form given to our sentiments — could only grow 
out of that patient watching of external fact, and that 
silencing of preconceived notions, which are urged 
upon the mind by the problems of physical science. 

George Eliot 
Essay on Lecky's " Influence of Rationalism " 



A CHRYSALIS 

WHEN gathering shells cast upward by the 
waves 

Of Progress, they who note its ebb and flow, 

Its flux and reflux, surely come to know 
That the sea-level rises ; that dark caves 
Of ignorance are flooded, and foul graves 

Of sin are cleansed ; albeit the work is slow ; 

Till, seeing great from less forever grow. 
Law comes to mean for them the Love that saves ! 
And leaning down the ages, my dull ear, 

lOO 



God-Seeking 

Catching their slow-ascending harmonies, 
I am uplift by them, and borne more near, 

I feel within my flesh — laid pupa-wise — 
A soul of worship, tho' of vision dim, 
Which links me with wing-folded cherubim. 

Emily Pfeiffer 



GOD-SEEKING 

GOD-SEEKING thou hast journeyed far and nigh. 
On dawn-lit mountain-tops thy soul did yearn 
To hear His trailing garments wander by ; 

And where 'mid thunderous glooms great sunsets 
burn. 
Vainly thou sought'st His shadow on sea and sky ; 

Or gazing up, at noontide, could'st discern 
Only a neutral heaven's indLfiPerent eye 
And countenance austerely taciturn. 
Yet whom thou soughtest I have found at last, 

Neither where tempest dims the world below. 
Nor where the westering daylight reels aghast 

In conflagrations of red overthrow : 
But where this virgin brooklet silvers past. 
And yellowing either bank the king-cups blow. 

William Watson: 



lOI 



SLEEP 

WHEN to soft sleep we give ourselves away, 
And in a dream as in a fairy bark 
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark 
To purple daybreak — little thought we pay 
To that sweet bitter world we know by day. 
We are clean quit of it, as is a lark 
So high in heaven no human eye can mark 
The thin swift pinion cleaving through the gray. 
Till we awake ill fate can do no ill. 
The resting heart shall not take up again 
The heavy load that yet must make it bleed ; 
For this brief space the loud world's voice is still, 
No faintest echo of it brings us pain. 
How will it be when we shall sleep indeed ? 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Copyright 1885, by Houghton, Miflain & Co. 

HOW LITTLE OF OURSELVES WE KNOW 

HOW little of ourselves we know 
Before a grief the heart has felt ! 
The lessons that we learn of woe 
May brace the mind as well as melt. 

The energies too stern for mirth. 

The reach of thought, the strength of will, 

'Mid cloud and tempest have their birth, 

Through blight and blast, their course fulfill. 

I02 



Past and Future 

And yet 'tis when it mourns and fears, 

The loaded spirit feels forgiven ; 
And through the mist of falling tears 

We catch the clearest glimpse of heaven. 

Lord Morpeth 



PAST AND FUTURE 

FAIR garden, where the man and woman dwelt, 
And loved, and worked, and where, in work's 
reprieve, 
The sabbath of each day, the restful eve. 
They sat in silence, with locked hands, and felt 
The voice which compassed them, a-near, a-f ar, 
Which murmured in the fountains and the breeze, 
Which breathed in spices from the laden trees. 
And sent a silvery shout from each lone star. 
Sweet dream of Paradise ! and it a dream. 

One that has helped us when our faith was weak ; 
We wake, and still it holds us, but would seem 
Before us, not behind, — the good we seek, — 
The good from lowest root which waxes ever, 
The golden age of science and endeavor. 

Emily Pfeiffer 



103 



ALL STARTING FAIRLY 

WE may not be doomed 
To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest 
Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God, 
But elevate the race at once ! We ask 
To put forth just our strength, our human strength, 
All starting fairly, all equipped alike, 
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted — 
See if we cannot beat Thine angels yet I 
Such is my task. I go to gather this 
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed 
About the world, long lost or never found. 
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope ? 
Why ever make man's good distinct from God'i, 
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust ? 
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me ? 
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world 
Apart from His, like those who set themselves 
To find the nature of the spirit they bore. 
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams 
Were only born to vanish in this life, 
Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere. 
But chose to figure forth another world 
And other frames meet for their vast desires — 
And all a dream ? 

Robert Browning 

Paracelsus 

104 



IF IT SHOULD BE WE ARE WATCHED 
UNAWARE 

IF it should be we are watched unaware 
By those who are gone from us ; if our sighs 
Ring in their ears ; if tears that scald our eyes 
They see and long to stanch ; if our despair 

Fills them with anguish, — we must learn to bear 
In strength of silence. Howso doubt denies 
It cannot give assurance which defies 

All peradventure ; and if anywhere 

Our loved grieve with our grieving, cruel we 

To cherish selfishness of woe. The chance 
Should keep us steadfast. Tortured utterly. 

This hope alone in all the world's expanse 

We clutch forlornly ; how deep love can be. 

Grief's silence proving more than utterance. 

Arlo Bates 

Sonnets in Shadow 
Copyright 1887, by Roberts Brothers 

MIRACLES GOING OUT 

ALTHOUGH an educated Protestant may man- 
age to retain for his own lifetime the belief in 
miracles in which he was brought up, yet his children will 
lose it ; so to an educated Catholic we may say, putting 
the change only a little further o£P, that (unless some 
unforseen deluge should overwhelm European civiliza- 



Say Not, the Struggle Naught Availeth 

tion, leaving everything to be begun anew) his grand- 
children will lose it. They will lose it insensibly, as 
the eighteenth century saw the gradual extinction, 
among the educated classes, of that belief in witchcraft 
which in the century previous, a man like Sir Matthew 
Hale could affirm to have the authority of Scripture 
and of the wisdom of all nations, — spoke of, in short, 
just as many religious people speak of miracles now. 
Witchcraft is but one department of the miraculous; 
and it was comparatively easy, no doubt, to abandon 
one department, when men had all the rest of the re- 
gion to fall back upon. Nevertheless, the forces of 
experience, which have prevailed against witchcraft 
will inevitably prevail also against miracles at large, 
and that by the mere progress of time. 

Matthew Arnold 
God and the Bible 



SAY NOT, THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT 
AVAILETH 

SAY not, the struggle naught availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not, nor faileth. 

And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; 

It may be, in yon smoke concealed. 
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, 

And, but for you, possess the field. 

1 06 



Self- Dependence 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by eastern windows only. 

When daylight comes, comes in the light, 

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly. 
But westward, look, the land is bright. 

Arthur Hugh Clough 



SELF-DEPENDENCE 

WEARY of myself, and sick of asking 
What I am, and what I ought to be, 
At the vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 
Forward, forward, o'er the starlit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 

O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 

<« Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, 

Calm me, ah, compose me to the end. 

« Ah, once more," I cried, " ye Stars, ye Waters, 
On my heart your mighty charm renew : 
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you. 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you." 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 
Over the lit sea's unquiet way. 
In the rustling night-air came the answer — 
« Wouldst thou le as they are ? Live as they. 

107 



Autumn 

" Unaff righted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

" And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll. 
For alone they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

« Bounded by themselves and unobservant 
In what state God's other works may be. 
In their own tasks all their own powers pouring. 
These attain the mighty life you see." 

O air-born voice ! long since, severely clear 
A cry like thine in my own heart I hear. 
" Resolve to be thyself : and know, that he 
Who finds himself, loses his misery." 

Matthew Arnold 



AUTUMN 

NOW Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, 
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, 
And night by night the monitory blast 
Wails in the key-hole, telling how it pass'd 
O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes. 
Or grim wide wave ; and now the power is felt 
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods 
Than any joy indulgent summer dealt. 

io8 



God is not Dumb 

Dear friends, together in the glimmering eve, 
Pensive and glad, with tones that recognize 
The soft invisible dew in each one's eyes, 
It may be, somewhat thus we shall have leave 
To walk with memory, when distant lies 
Poop earth, where we were wont to live and grieve. 

William Allingham 



GOD IS NOT DUMB 

GOD is not dumb, that he should speak no more ; 
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor ; 

There towers the mountain of the Voice no less. 
Which whoso seeks shall find ; but he who bends 
Intent on manna still, and mortal ends. 

Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ. 

And not on paper leaves, nor leaves of stone ; 
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it. 
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 
While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, 
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud. 
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. 

James Russell Lowell 

Bibliolatres 

Copyright 1896, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. . 



109 



TEARS 

NOT in the time of pleasure 
Hope doth set her bow ; 
But in the sky of Borrow, 
Over the vale of woe. 

Through gloom and shadow look we 
On beyond the years ; 
The soul would have no rainbow 
Had the eyes no tears. 

John Vance Cheney 

Copyright 1887, by Frederick A. Stokes Company. 



THE WORLD'S ADVANCE 

JUDGE mildly the tasked world ; and disincline 
To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. 
Tou have perchance observed the inebriate's track 
At night when he has quitted the inn-sign : 
He plays diversions on the homeward line, 
Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack : 
A hedge may take him but he turns not back. 
Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine : 

" Spiral," the memorable lady terms. 
Our mind's ascent : our world's advance presents 

That figure on a flat ; — the way of worms. 
Cherish the promise of its good intents, 
And warn it not one instinct to efface 
Till reason ripens for the vacant place. 

George Meredith 



THE LAND BEYOND THE SEA 

THE land beyond the sea ! 
When will life's tasks be o'er ? 
When shall we reach that soft blue shore, 
O'er the dark strait whose billows foam and roar ? 
When shall we come to thee, 
Calm Land beyond the Sea ? 

The Land beyond the Sea ! 
How close it often seems, 
When flushed with evening's peaceful gleams ; 
And the wistful heart looks o'er the strait, and dreams ! 

It longs to fly to thee, 

Calm Land beyond the Sea ! 

The Land beyond the Sea ! 
How dark our present home ! 
By the dull beach and sullen foam 
How wearily, how drearily we roam, 

With arms outstretched to thee, 

Calm Land beyond the Sea ! 

The Land beyond the Sea ! 
Why fadest thou in light ? 
Why art thou better seen toward night ? 
Dear Land ! look always plain, look always bright, 

That we may gaze on thee, 

Calm Land beyond the Sea ! 

Frederick William Faber 



INFIDELITY 

WHO is the infidel, but he who fears 
To face the utmost truth, whate'er it be ? 
Dreads God the light ? and is his majesty 
A shadow that in sunshine disappears ? 
Or leads he in the swift-ascending years 
Into a light where men may plainer see ? 
He trusts him best to whom the mystery 
Hides nothing dangerous ; who ever hears. 
With faith unshaken, his new uttered voice, 
And knows it cannot contradict the truth 

It in the old time spoke. Whate'er it saith, 
He fears not then, but bids his heart rejoice, 
In old age trustful as he was in youth. 
This only, though called infidel, is faith. 

MmoT JuDSON Savage 

Copyright 1882, by George H. ElUs 



112 



Duty Here and Now 



Conduct is three-fourths of life. 

Matthew Arnold 

So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon ; but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who urraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

William Cullen Bryant 

Thanatopsis 



BE STRONG AND OF GOOD COURAGE 

WHAT do you think of yourself? What do 
you think of the world? . . . These 
are questions with which all must deal as it seems good 
to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some 
way or other we must deal with them. . . . In all 
important transactions of life we have to take a leap 
in the dark. . . . If we decide to leave the rid- 
dles unanswered, that is a choice ; if we waver in our 
answer, that, too, is a choice ; but whatever choice we 
make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to 
turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one 
can prevent him ; no one can show beyond reasonable 
doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise 
and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can 
prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks 
best ; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. 
We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling 
snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses 
now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we 
stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the 
wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not 
certainly know whether there is any right one. What 
must we do ? " Be strong and of good courage." Act 
for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. 
If death ends all, we cannot meet death better. 
James Fitz James Stephen 
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 



NOTHING WALKS WITH AIMLESS FEET 
F Sleep and Death be truly one, 
And every spirit's folded bloom 
Thro* all its intervital gloom 
In some long trance should slumber on ; 



I 



Unconscious of the sliding hour, 
Bare of the body, might it last, 
And silent traces of the past 

Be all the color of the flower : 

So then were nothing lost to man ; 
But that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 

The total world since life began : 

And love would last as pure and whole 
As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime 

Kewaken with the dawning soul. 

O yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill. 
To pangs of nature, sins of will. 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd. 
Or cast as rubbish to the void. 

When God hath made the pile complete ; 

ii6 



Scientific Grounds for Right Conduct 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 

Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another's gain. 

Behold, we know not anything ; 
I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light : 
And with no language but a cry. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

In Memoriam 



SCIENTIFIC GROUNDS FOR RIGHT 
CONDUCT 

THE establishment of rules of right conduct on a 
scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that 
moral injunctions are losing the authority given by^ 
their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of 
morals is becoming imperative. Few things can hap- 
pen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regu- 
lative system no longer fit, before another and fitter 
regulative system has grown up to replace it. Most of 
those who reject the current creed, appear to assume 
that the controlling agency furnished by it may safely 

117 



The Prayer-seeker 

be thrown aside, and the vacancy left unfilled by any 
other controlling agency. Meanwhile, those who de- 
fend the current creed allege that, in the absence of 
the guidance it yields, no guidance can exist : divine 
commandments they think the only possible guides. 
Thus between these extreme opponents there is a cer- 
tain community. The one holds that the gap left by 
disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics need 
not be filled by a code of natural ethics ; and the other 
holds that it cannot be so filled. Both contemplate a 
vacuum, which the one wishes and the other fears. As 
the change which promises or threatens to bring about 
this state, desired or dreaded, is rapidly progressing, 
those who believe that the vacuum can be filled, and 
that it must be filled, are called upon to do something 
in pursuance of their belief. 

Herbert Spencer 

Preface to ''The Data of Ethics " 



THE PRAYER-SEEKER 

ALONG the aisle where prayer was made 
A woman, all in black arrayed, 
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host, 
With gliding motion of a ghost. 
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon 
A scroll which bore these words alone, 
Pray for me ! 
Copyright 1894, by Houghton, Miflain & Co. 

Il8 



The Prayer-seeker 

Back from the place of worshiping 
She glided like a guilty thing : 
The rustle of her draperies stirred 
By hurrying feet, alone was heard ; 
While full of awe, the preacher read, 
As out into the dark she sped : 

ii Pray for me ! " 

Back to the night from whence she came, 
To unimagined grief or shame ! 
Across the threshold of that door 
None knew the burden that she bore ; 
Alone she left the written scroll, 
The legend of a troubled soul, — 

Pray for met 

Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin ! 
Thou leav'st a common need within ; 
Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight, 
Some misery inarticulate, 
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, 
Some household sorrow all unsaid. 
Pray for us ! 

Pass on ! The type of all thou art, 
Sad witness to the human heart ! 
With face in veil and seal on lip. 
In mute and strange companionship, 
Like thee we wander to and fro. 
Humbly imploring as we go : 

Pray for us! 

"9 



The Prayer-seeker 

Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads 
Our want perchance hath greater needs ? 
Yet they who make their loss the gain 
Of others shall not ask in vain. 
And heaven bends low to hear the prayer 
Of love from lips of self -despair : 
Pray for us ! 

In vain remorse and fear and hate 
Beat with bruised hands against a fate 
Whose walls of iron only move 
And open to the touch of love. 
He only feels his burdens fall 
Who, taught by suffering, pities all. 
Pray for us ! 

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 

The mystery of another's breast. 

Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow, 

Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. 

Enough to note by many a sign 

That every heart hath needs like thine. 

Pray for us! 

John Greenleaf Whittier 



1 20 



OUTGROWN ASSOCIATIONS 

IN making false notions the proofs or close associ- 
ates of true ones, you are exposing the latter to 
the ruin which awaits the former. If you have in the 
minds of children or servants associated honesty, in- 
dustry, truthfulness, with the fear of hell-fire, then 
supposing this fear to become extinct in their minds, — 
which, being unfounded in truth, it is in constant risk 
of doing — the virtues associated with it are likely to 
be weakened in proportion as that association was 
strong. 

For all good habits in thought or conduct there are 
good and real reasons in the nature of things. To 
leave such habits attached to false opinions is to lessen 
the weight of these natural or spontaneous reasons, and 
so to do more harm in the long run, than efPacement of 
them seems for a time to do good. Most excellences 
in human character have a spontaneous root in our na- 
ture. Moreover, if they had not, and where they have 
not, there is always a valid and real defense for them. 
The unreal defense must be weaker than the real one, 
and the substitution of a weak for a strong defense, 
where both are to be had, is not useful but the very 
opposite. John Morley 

On Compromise 

121 



DAYS 

DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes. 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will. 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 
Under her solenm fillet saw the scorn. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



RELIGION AND CONDUCT 

THOUGH the decay of religion may leave the in- 
stitutes of morality intact, it drains off their 
inward power. The devout faith of men expresses and 
measures the intensity of their moral nature, and it 
cannot be lost without a remission of enthusiasm, and 
imder this low pressure, the successful re-entrance of 
importunate desires and clamorous passions which had 
been driven back. To believe in an ever-living and 
perfect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest 
moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift 
them from the provincial stage of human society to the 
imperishable theater of all being. When planted thus 

122 



The Law of Love 

in the very substance of things, they justify and sup- 
port the ideal estimates of the conscience ; they deepen 
every guilty shame ; they guarantee every righteous 
hope ; and they keep the will with a divine casting- 
vote in every balance of temptation. The sanctity thus 
given to the claims of duty, and the interest that gathers 
around the play of character, appear to me more im- 
portant elements in the power of religion than its di- 
rect sanctions of hope and fear. Yet to these also it is 
hardly possible to deny great weight, not only as ex- 
tending the range of personal interests, but as the an- 
swer of reality to the retributory verdicts of the moral 
sense. Cancel these beliefs, and morality will be left 
reasonable still, but paralyzed ; possible to tempera- 
ments comparatively passionless, but with no grasp on 
vehement and poetic natures ; and gravitating to the 
simply prudential wherever it maintains its ground. 

James Martineau 
The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious 

Belief 



M 



THE LAW OF LOVE 

AKE channels for the streams of love, 
Where they may broadly run ; 

And love has overflowing streams, 
To fill them every one. 

"3 



•ogres 



s Not Automatic 



But if at any time we cease 

Such channels to provide, 
The very founts of love for us 

Will soon be parched and dried. 

For we must share, if we would keep 

That blessing from above ; 
Ceasing to give, we cease to have — 

Such is the law of love. 

Richard Chenevix Trench 



PROGRESS NOT AUTOMATIC 

IT would be odd if the theory which makes progress 
depend on modification, forbade us to attempt to 
modify. When it is said that the various successive 
changes in thought and institution present and con- 
summate themselves spontaneously, no one means by 
spontaneity that they come to pass independently of 
himian effort and volition. On the contrary, this 
energy of the members of the society is one of the 
spontaneous elements. It is quite as indispensable as 
any other of them, if, indeed, it be not more so. 
Progress depends upon tendencies and forces in a com- 
mimity. But of these tendencies and forces, the or- 
gans and representatives must plainly be found among 
the men and women of the community, and cannot 
possibly be found anywhere else. Progress is not au- 
tomatic, in the sense that if we were all cast into a 

124 



Starlight 

deep slumber for the space of a generation, we should 
awake to find ourselves in a greatly improved social 
state. The world only grows better, even in the mod- 
erate degree in which it does grow better, because 
people wish that it should, and take the right steps to 
make it better. Evolution is not a force, but a process ; 
not a cause, but a law. It explains the source, and 
marks the immovable limitations of social energy. But 
social energy itself can never be superseded either by 
evolution or by anything else. 

John Morley 
On Compromise 



STARLIGHT 

THEY think me daft, who nightly meet 
My face turned starward, while my feet 
Stumble along the unseen street ; 

But should man's thoughts have only room 
For earth, his cradle and his tomb. 
Not for his Temple's grander gloom ? 

And must the prisoner all his days 
Learn but his dungeon's narrow ways 
And never through its grating gaze ? 

Then let me linger in your sight. 
My only amaranths ! blossoming bright 
As over Eden's cloudless night. 
Copyright 1889, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



Starlight 

The same vast belt, and square, and crown, 
That on the Deluge glittered down. 
And lit the roofs of Bethlehem town I 

Ye make me one with all my race, 
A victor over time and space. 
Till all the path of men I pace. 

Far-speeding backward in my brain 
We build the Pyramids again, 
And Babel rises from the plain ; 

And climbing upward on your beams 
I peer within the Patriarch's dreams. 
Till the deep sky with angels teems. 

My comforters ! — Yea, why not mine ? 
The power that kindled you doth shine, 
In man, a mastery divine ; 

That love which throbs in every star. 
And quickens all the worlds afar. 
Beats warmer where his children are. 

The shadow of the wings of Death 
Broods over us ; we feel his breath : 
" Resurgam " still the spirit saith. 

These tired feet, this weary brain. 
Blotted with many a mortal stain. 
May crumble earthward — not in vain. 

126 



The Frost Palace 

With swifter feet that shall not tire, 
Eyes that shall fail not at your fire, 
Nearer your splendors I aspire. 

Edward Rowland Sill 



THE FROST PALACE 

SINCE the theological buttresses of morals are 
giving way, the question is anxiously pressed. 
What is to take their place ? The answer must be that 
morals derive their real authority from the facts of 
nature and of life. Truthfulness, sobriety, industry, 
and the rest, are rewarded here and now in most cases. 
In the few cases where they are not rewarded, why 
blink the fact ? It is a fact which may purge the good 
man's record of the taunt that he does right for 
wages, — although at the same time it tempts the evil 
man to do wrong from which he may escape scathless. 
Let it be remembered, too, that most of the right in 
the world is of good men's making, and that there will 
be more when they make more — as they easily can. A 
theology which has laid imdue stress on generosity has 
laid too little upon justice. Let us put our sympathy 
in the right place, and instead of pitying the thief and 
drunkard and murderer so much, begin to pity their 
victims, and meanwhile do what we can to make 
thieves, drunkards, and murderers impossible. Chris- 
tianity still bears the stamp of its primitive days, when 
the Christian cowered before the pagan, and virtue 
trampled in the dust postponed its visions of peace 

127 



The Frost Palace 

and triumph to a sphere beyond the stars. To this 
day we have a thousand Crucifixions to one Ascension. 

But the teachers of right living can to-day be strong, 
not cowering and afraid. Such discordances as still 
exist between earning and having shall disappear just 
so soon as the people realize their power to remake the 
institutions which retain so much of the injustice of 
the past. Institutions are for men, not men for in- 
stitutions. In abating the evils of Property, and much 
else, an enlightened ballot has great tasks before it. 

Religious men need feel no fear. Their neighbors 
do not change one set of convictions for another unless 
they believe the new to be truer than the old. Illusion 
dies no faster than Fact is recognized as more worthy 
of place. 

A few years ago it was the pleasure of the young 
people of a Canadian city to build their first palace of 
ice in one of their public squares. Its proportions 
were magnificent, its effect one of spectral beauty. 
When the structure was doomed to melt in the rays of 
the sunbeams of spring, there was not a little appre- 
hension. " What will befall the neighborhood ? " was 
asked, " when these massy walls and columns are dis- 
solved ? " What was the fact ? Day by day a gentle 
thaw did its work so quietly that the ice blocks might 
have been chiseled stone for all the hurt they did. The 
thirsty groxmd drank in every drop of liquid as fast as 
it fell. The frost palace vanished even more grace- 
fully than it first arose at the architect's bidding. 

Henry Allen Bliss 

128 



IF I SHOULD DIE TO-NIGHT 

IF I should die to-night, 
My friends would look upon my quiet face 
Before they laid it in its resting-place, 
And deem that death had left it almost fair ; 
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair, 
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness, 
And fold my hands with lingering caress, — 
Poor hands, so empty and so cold to-night ! 

If I should die to-night. 
My friends would call to mind, with loving thought, 
Some kindly deed the icy hands had wrought ; 
Some gentle word the frozen lips had said ; 
Errands on which the willing feet had sped ; 
The memory of my selfishness and pride. 
My hasty words, would all be put aside, 
And so I should be loved and mourned to-night. 

If I should die to-night. 
Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me, 
Recalling other days remorsefully ; 
The eyes that chill me with averted glance 
Would look upon me as of yore, perchance. 
And soften, in the old familiar way ; 
For who could war with dumb, unconscious clay ! 
So I might rest, forgiven of all, to-night. 

139 



The Golden Rule 

Oh, friends, I pray to-night. 
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow— 
The way is lonely, let me feel them now. 
Think gently of me ; I am travel-worn ; 
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn. 
Forgive, oh, hearts estranged, forgive, I plead ! 
When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need 
The tenderness for which I long to-night. 

Arabella E. Smith 



THE GOLDEN RULE 

MORALISTS of all ages and of all faiths, attend- 
ing only to the relations of men towards one 
another in an ideal society, have agreed upon the " golden 
rule," " Do as you would be done by." In other words, 
let sympathy be your guide, put yourself in the place 
of the man toward whom your action is directed ; and 
do to him what you would like to have done to your- 
self under the circumstances. However much one may 
admire the generosity of such a rule of conduct ; how- 
ever confident one may be that average men may be 
thoroughly depended upon not to carry it out in its full 
logical consequences ; it is nevertheless desirable to 
recognize the fact that these consequences are incom- 
patible with the existence of a civil state, under any 
circumstances of this world which have obtained, or, 
so far as one can see, are likely to come to pass. 

For I imagine there can be no doubt that the great 
desire of every wrongdoer is to escape from the painful 

130 



The Golden Rule 

consequences of his actions. If I put myself in the 
place of the man who has robbed me, I find that I am 
possessed by an exceeding desire not to be fined or im- 
prisoned ; if in that of the man who has smitten me on 
one cheek, I contemplate with satisfaction the absence 
of any worse result than the turning of the other cheek 
for like treatment. Strictly observed, the "golden 
rule " involves the negation of law by the refusal to 
put it in motion against law-breakers ; and, as regards 
the external relations of a polity, it is the refusal to 
continue the struggle for existence. It can be obeyed, 
even partially, only under the protection of a society 
which repudiates it. Without such shelter, the follow- 
ers of the "golden rule" may indulge in hopes of 
heaven, but they must reckon with the certainty that 
other people will be masters of the earth. 

What would become of the garden if the gardener 
treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and tres- 
passers as he would like to be treated, if he were in 

their place ? 

Thomas Henry Huxley 

Evolution and Ethics 



132. 



EVOLUTION 

HUNGER that strivest in the restless arms 
Of the sea-flower, that drivest rooted things 

To break their moorings, that unfoldest wings 
In creatures to be rapt above thy harms ; 
Hunger, of whom the hungry-seeming waves 

Were the first ministers, till, free to range, 

Thou mad'st the Universe thy park and grange, 
What is it thine insatiate heart still craves ? 
Sacred disquietude, divine unrest ! 

Maker of all that breathes the breath of life, 
No unthrift greed spurs thine unflagging zest. 

No lust self-slaying hounds thee to the strife ; 
Thou art the Unknown God on whom we wait ; 
Thy path the course of our unfolded fate. 

Emily Pfeiffer 



THE RIGHT MUST WIN 

OH, it is hard to work for God, 
To rise and take His part 
Upon this battle-field of earth, 
And not sometimes lose heart ! 

He hides Himself so wondrously. 
As though there were no God ; 

He is least seen when all the powers 
Of ill are most abroad. 



13* 



The Right Must Win 

Or he deserts us at the hour 

The fight is all but lost ; 
And seems to leave us to ourselves 

Just when we need Him most. 

Ill masters good ; good seems to change 

To ill with greatest ease ; 
And, worst of all, the good with good 

Is at cross-purposes. 

Ah ! God is other than we think ; 

His ways are far above. 
Far beyond reason's height, and reach'd 

Only by child-like love. 

Workman of God ! Oh, lose not heart, 
But learn what God is like ; 

And in the darkest battle-field 
Thou shalt know where to strike. 

Thrice bless'd is he to whom is given 

The instinct that can tell 
That God is on the field when He 

Is most invisible. 



Bless'd, too, is he who can divine 
Where real right doth lie. 

And dares to take the side that seems 
Wrong to man's blindfold eye. 

133 



An Angel in the House 

For right is right, since God is God ; 

And right the day must win ; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin. 

Frederick William Faber 



AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE 

HOW sweet it were if, without fright, 
Or dying of the beauteous sight, 
An angel came to us, and we could bear 
To see him issue from the silent air 
At evening in our room, and bend on ours 
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers 
News of dear children who have never 
Been dead indeed — as we shall know for ever. 
Alas ! we think not that we daily see 
About our hearths — angels that are to be, 
Or may be if they will, and we prepare 
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air ; 
A child, a friend, a wife, whose soft heart sings 
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings. 

Leigh Hunt 



134 



« OH, MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE " 

OH, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence : live 
In pulses stirr'd to generosity, 
In deeds of daring, rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self. 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues. 

So to live in heaven : 
To make undying music in the world, 
Breathing as beauteous order that controls 
With growing sway the growing life of man. 
So we inherit that sweet purity 
For which we struggled, fail'd, and agoniz'd 
With widening retrospect that bred despair. 
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, 
A vicious parent shaming still its child. 
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ; 
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, 
Die in the large and charitable air. 
And all our rarer, better, truer self. 
That sobb'd religiously in yearning song, 
That watch'd to ease the burthen of the world, 
Laboriously tracing what must be. 
And what may yet be better, — saw within 
A worthier image for the sanctuary, 
And shaped it forth before the multitude, 



Why False Dogmas Survive 

Divinely human, raising worship so 
To higher reverence more mix'd with love, — 
That better self shall live till human Time 
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
Be gather'd like a scroll within the tomb 
Unread forever. 

This is life to come, 
Which martyr'd men have made more glorioks 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
Be the sweet presence of a good difPus'd, 
And in diffusion ever more intense ! 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world. 

George Eliot 



WHY FALSE DOGMAS SURVIVE 

NO doubt history abounds with cases in which a 
false opinion on moral or religious subjects, or 
an erroneous motive in conduct, has seemed to be a 
stepping-stone to truth. But this is in no sense a dem- 
onstration of the utility of error. For in all such cases 
the erroneous opinion or motive was far from being 
wholly erroneous, or wholly without elements of truth 
and reality. If it helped to quicken the speed or mend 

136 



On Life's Rough Sea 

the direction of progress, that must have been by vir- 
tue of some such elements within it. All that was 
error in it was pure waste, or worse than waste. It is 
true that the religious sentiment has clothed itself in a 
great number of unworthy, inadequate, depressing, and 
otherwise misleading shapes, dogmatic and liturgic. 
Yet, on the whole, the religious sentiment has conferred 
enormous benefits on civilization. This is no proof of 
the utility of the mistaken direction which these dog- 
matic or liturgic shapes imposed upon it. On the con- 
trary, the effect of the false dogmas and enervating 
liturgies is so much that has to be deducted from the 
advantages conferred by a sentiment in itself valuable 
and of priceless capability. 

John Morley 
On Compromise 



ON LIFE'S ROUGH SEA 

GIVE me a spirit that on this life's rough sea 
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind, 
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, 
And his rapt ship runs on her side so low 
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air. 
There is no danger to a man that knows 
What life and death is, — there's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge ; neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other law. 

George Chapman 



137 



MORALITY AND THEISM 

THE authors of systems of moral philosophy have 
sought to discover some intellectual principle 
from which all moral rules could be logically deduced, 
the apprehension of which would constrain all men to 
be moral. But the question remains, why men who do 
not like to be moral, as many men do not, are to sacri- 
fice their propensities to a logical deduction from an 
intellectual principle. Suppose virtue to correspond, 
as Clarke says, to the fitness of things, why is Borgia 
to prefer the fitness of things to the enjoyment of his 
orgies and to the criminal courses by which the means 
of that enjoyment are to be obtained ? What is needed 
to influence the actions of men is not an abstract princi- 
ple or a definition, but a motive. It is by renewing 
and reinforcing the motive power, not by defining 
morality, that the great moral reforms and movements 
have been made. Desire of health, of domestic happi- 
ness, of the esteem and good-will of our fellows, of the 
security for our lives and property which we must pur- 
chase by reciprocal respect for the lives and property 
of others, and by obedience to the laws, are motive 
powers. The necessity of obeying the will of God, with 
eternal reward or punishment annexed, on which Paley 
founds the inducement to virtue, provided the truth of 
theism can be proved, is a motive power of the most 
overwhelming kind. Intellectual perception of the 
fitness of things is not. 
Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co. 

138 



Morality and Theism 

If no divine command for the practice of virtue can 
be shown, if no assurance of the virtuous man's re- 
ward, such as Paley assumes, can be given, moral 
philosophy must, it would appear, be content simply to 
take the observation of human nature as its basis and 
to build its system on the natural desires of man, offer- 
ing them such satisfaction as is consistent with the wel- 
fare of the community and the race. We naturally 
desire health, and to be healthy means to be temperate 
and continent ; we desire, for ourselves and our 
families, the means of living, and to obtain them we 
must be industrious, frugal, and of good repute ; we 
desire domestic happiness, and to obtain it we must 
practice the domestic virtues ; we desire the good-will 
of our fellow-men with the advantages which it brings, 
and to obtain it we must practice the virtues of good 
members of society and good citizens. There is no 
such thing as altruism in the literal sense of that term. 
Self is present in all we do, though the self is that of 
a being who desires love and fellowship as well as food 
and raiment ; with which qualification the philosophy 
which has resolved morality into self-interest, though 
much decried, would be right enough. No man ever 
really acts against what he apprehends at the time to 
be his interest, though his interest may lead him to 
sacrifice his animal or individual to his domestic or 
social desires. 

GoLDWiN Smith 
Guesses at the Riddle of Existence 



139 



LITTLE BY LITTLE 

LITTLE by little, as some down-trod weed 
Leaf after leaf lifts painfully again, 
Does life renew its uses. Though remain 
Desire nor hope, though every heart-wound bleed, 

Nature's high law no mortal may impede 
In its remorseless working. Wholly vain 
Protest or strife ; we to obey are fain, 

Slaves of strong destiny in thought and deed. 

As those whom destiny compels, we take 
One after one all life's old duties up ; 
Its cares and fears, its terrors and its ache ; 

Even its joys, though each, an empty cup 

Where once was wine, but serves the thought to 

wake 

Of draught divine we once from it did sup. 

Arlo Bates 

Sonnets in Shadow 
Copyright 1887, by Roberts Brothers 



SCIENCE AND MORALS 

IF the diseases of society consist in the weakness of 
its faith in the existence of the God of the the- 
ologians, in a future state, and in uncaused volitions, 
the indication, as the doctors say, is to suppress the- 
ology and philosophy, whose bickerings about things of 

140 



Science and Morals 

which they know nothing have been the prime cause 
and continual sustenance of that evil scepticism which 
is the nemesis of meddling with the unknowable. 

Cinderella is modestly conscious of her ignorance of 
these high matters. She lights the fire, sweeps the 
house, and provides the diimer; and is rewarded by 
being told that she is a base creature, devoted to low 
and material interests. But in her garret she has fairy 
visions out of the ken of the pair of shrews who are 
quarreling downstairs. She sees the order which per- 
vades the seeming disorder of the world ; the great 
drama of evolution, with its full share of pity and 
terror, but also with abundant goodness and beauty, 
unrolls itself before her eyes, and she learns in her 
heart of hearts the lesson that the foundation of mor- 
ality is to have done, once and for all, with lying ; to 
give up pretending to believe that for which there is 
no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions 
about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. 

She knows that the safety of morality lies neither in 
the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, 
or this or that philosophical creed, but in a real and 
living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends 
social disorganization upon the track of immorality as 
surely as it sends physical disease after physical tress- 
passes. And of that firm and lively faith it is her high 
mission to be the priestess. 

Thomas Henry Huxley 

Essays 



141 



ALONG THE NOISY CITY WAYS 

ALONG the noisy city ways 
And in this rattling city car, 
On this the dreariest of days, 

Perplexed with business fret and jar, 

When suddenly a young, sweet face 

Looked on my petulance and pain 
And lent it something of its grace 

And charmed it into peace again. 

The day was just as bleak without, 

My neighbors just as cold within. 
And truth was just as full of doubt. 

The world was just as full of sin. 

But in the light of that young smile 

The world grew pure, the heart g^ew warm, 

And sunshine gleamed a little while 
Across the darkness of the storm. 

I did not care to seek her name, 

I only said, " God bless thy life. 
Thy sweet young grace be still the same, 
Or happy maid or happy wife." 
1858 Phillips Brooks 

The above was found in one of Phillips Brooks' early note-bookB 
in which he jotted down thoughts and memoranda.— i?o*to» Tran- 
script. 

142 



THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

THE strength of the human future over the celes- 
tial future is clearly pre-eminent. Make the 
future hope a social activity, and we give to the pres- 
ent life a social ideal. Make the future hope personal 
beatitude, and personality is stamped deeper on every 
act of our daily life. Now we may make the future 
hope, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our future 
is simply an active existence prolonged by society. 
And our future hope rests not in any vague yearning, 
of which we have as little evidence as we have definite 
conception : it rests on a perfectly certain truth ac- 
cepted by all thoughtful minds, the truth that the ac- 
tions, feelings, thoughts, of every one of us — our 
minds, our characters, our souls^ as organic wholes — 
do marvelously mold and influence each other ; that 
the highest part of ourselves, the abiding part of us, 
passes into other lives, and continues to live in other 
lives. Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to 
rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after true life 
than this ever present sense that we are indeed im- 
mortal ; not that we have an immortal something 
within us, but that in very truth we ourselves, our 
thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal; 
nay, cannot die, but must ever continue what we make 
them, working and doing, if no longer receiving and 
enjoying ? And not merely we ourselves, in our per- 
sonal identity, are immortal, but each act, thought, 
and feeling is immortal, and this immortality is not 

143 



Alternatives 

some ecstatic and indescribable condition in space, but 
activity on earth in the real and known work of life, in 
the welfare of those whom we have loved, and in the 
happiness of those who come after us. 

The difference between our faith and that of the 
orthodox is this : we look to the permanence of the ac- 
tivities which give others happiness ; they look to the 
permanence of the consciousness which can enjoy hap- 
piness. Which is the nobler ? 

Frederic Harrison 

See reply to above by Thomas Henry Huxley, in Section First 



ALTERNATIVES 

LONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, 
How angrily thou spurn'st all simple fare ! 
Christ, some one says, was human, as we are ; 
No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan ; 
We live no more when we have done our span, 

" Well, then for Christ," thou answerest, " who can 

care ? 
From sin which Heaven records not, why forbear ? 
Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! " 

So answerest thou ; but why not rather say — 
« Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high. 
Sits there no judge in heaven our sin to see ? 
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey ! 
Was Christ a man like us ? Ah, let us try 
If we, too, then, can be such men as he ! " 

Matthew Arnold 

144 



MAN CAN DO HIS DUTY 

THE impossibility of conceiring that this grand 
and wondrous universe, with our conscious 
selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief 
argument for the existence of God ; but whether this 
is an argument of real value, I have never been able to 
decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the 
mind still craves to know whence it came, and how it 
arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the im- 
mense amount of suffering through the world. I am, 
also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judg- 
ment of the many able men who have fully believed in 
God ; but here again I see how poor an argument this 
is. The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole 
subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect ; but man 
can do his duty. Chables Darwin 

Life and Letters 
In answer to a request for hie views on religion 

A FLIGHT FROM GLORY 

ONCE, from the parapet of gems and glow, 
An Angel said, « O God, the heart grows cold 
On these eternal battlements of gold. 
Where all is pure, but cold as virgin snow. 

Here sobs are never heard ; no salt tears flow ; 

Here there are none to help — nor sick nor old ; 

No wrong to fight, no justice to uphold : 
Grant me thy leave to live man's life below." 

145 



Not in Vain 

"And then annihilation ? " God replied. 

"Yes," said the Angel, " even that dread price ; 
For earthly tears are worth eternal night." 

« Then go," said God. — The Angel opened wide 

His dazzling wings, gazed back on Heaven thrice, 
And plunged for ever from the walls of Light. 

Eugene Lee-Hamilton 
« Sonnets of the Wingless Hours *' 
Copyright 1894, by Stone & Kimball 



NOT IN VAIN 

LET me not deem that I was made in vain, 
Or that my being was an accident 

Which Fate, in working its sublime intent, 
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. 
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain 

Hath its own mission, and is duly sent 

To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent 
*Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. 
The very shadow of an insect's wing, 

For which the violet cared not while it stayed 
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, 

Proved that the sun was shining by its shade. 
Then can a drop of the eternal spring, 

Shadow of living lights, in vain be made ? 

Hartley Coleridge 



146 



MORTAL MEN MAY BE GOOD MEN 

THOMAS YOUNG in "Night Thoughts" (First 
Night), says : 

" As in the dying parent dies the child, 
Virtue with Immortality expires. 
Who tells me he denies the soul immortal, 
Whate'et his boast., has told me he's a knave. 
His duty is to love himself alone, 
Nor care if mankind perish, if he smiles." 

We can imagine the man who " denies his soul im- 
mortal," replying, « It is quite possible that you would 
be a knave, and love yourself alone, if it were not for 
your belief in immortality; but you are not to force 
upon me what would result from your own want of 
moral emotion. I am just and honest, not because I 
expect to live in another world, but because, having 
felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty toward my- 
self, I have a fellow-feeling with other men, who 
would suffer the same pain if I were imjust or dis- 
honest toward them. Why should I give my neighbor 
short weight in this world, because there is not another 
world in which I should have nothing to weigh out to 
him ? I am honest because I don't like to inflict evil 
on others in this life, not because I am afraid of evil 
in another. The fact is, I do not love myself alone, 
whatever logical necessity there may be for that con- 
clusion in your mind. I have a tender love for my 
wife, and children, and friends, and through that love 
I sympathize with like affections in other men. It is a 
pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow-being, 



We Live in Deeds 

and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is 
mortal — because his life is so short, and I would have 
it, if possible, filled with happiness and not misery. 
Through my union and fellowship with the men and 
women I have seen, I feel a like, though a fainter, 
sympathy with those I have not seen ; and I am able so 
to live in imagination with the generations to come, 
that their good is not alien to me, and is a stimulus to 
me to labor for ends which may not benefit myself, but 
will benefit them. It is possible that you might pre- 
fer to * live the brute,' to sell your country, or to 
slay your father, if you were not afraid of some dis- 
agreeable consequences from the criminal laws of 
another world ; but even if I could conceive no mo- 
tive but my own worldly interest or the gratification of 
my animal desires, I have not observed that beastliness, 
treachery, and parricide, are the direct way to happi- 
ness and comfort on earth." 

George Eliot 
Essay on the poet Young 

WE LIVE IN DEEDS 

WE live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not 
breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the beat. 

Yet truth and falsehood meet in seeming, like 
The falling leaf and shadow on the pool's face. 

148 



While We May 

Men might be better if we better deemed 
Of them. The worst way to improve the world 
Is to condemn it. Men may overget 
Delusion, not despair. 

Philip James Bailey 
Festus 

WHILE WE MAY 

I'^HE hands are such dear hands; 
They are so full. They turn at our demands 
So often. They reach out, 
With trifles scarcely thought about, 

So many times. They do 
So very many things for me, foi you ; 

If their fond wills mistake, 
We may well bend, not break. 

They are such fond, frail lips 

That speak to us. Pray, if love strips 

Them of discretion many times. 
Or if they speak too slow, or quick, such crimes 

We may pass by, for we may see 
Days not far off when these small words may be 
Held not as slow, or quick, or out of place, but dear 

Because the lips are no more here. 

They are such dear familiar feet that go 
Along the path with ours; feet fast, or slow; 
And trying to keep pace, if they mistake. 
Or tread upon some flower that we would take 

Copyright 1886, by White, Stokes & Allen 

149 



While We May 

Upon our breast, or bruise some reed, 
Or crush poor Hope until it bleed, 

We may be mute, 
Not turning to impute 
Grave fault, for they and we 
Have such a little way to go, can be 
Together such a little while along the way, 
We will be patient while we may. 

So many little faults we find : 

We see them, for not blind 
Is love ; we see them, but if you and I 
Perhaps remember them some by and by 

They will not be 
Faults then — grave faults — to you and me, 
But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less, 

Remembrances to bless. 

Days change so many things — ^yes, hours — 
We see so differently in suns and showers; 

Mistaken words to-night 
May be so cherished by to-morrow's light ! 

We may be patient, for we know 

There's such a little way to go. 

George Exixgle 



150 



MORALITY AND RELIGION 

MORAL rules, apprehended as ideas first, and 
then rigorously followed as laws, are, and 
must be, for the sage only. The mass of mankind 
have neither force of intellect enough to apprehend 
them clearly as ideas, nor force of character enough to 
follow them strictly as laws. The mass of mankind 
can be carried along a course full of hardship for the 
natural man, can be borne over the thousand impedi- 
ments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful 
and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from 
reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense 
of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the 
burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can 
bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet 
have borne it ! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of 
labor and sorrow in his march toward the goal consti- 
tutes a relative inferiority ; the noblest souls of what- 
ever creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the 
Christian Paul, have insisted on the necessity of an in- 
spiration, a joyful emotion, to make man perfect. An 
obscure indication of this necessity is the one drop of 
truth in the ocean of verbiage with which the con- 
troversy on justification by faith has flooded the world. 
But, for the ordinary man, this sense of labor and 
sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualification ; it par- 
alyzes him ; under the weight of it he cannot make 
way toward the goal at all. The paramount virtue of 



Reveille 

religion is, that it has lighted up morality ; that it has 
supplied the emotion and the inspiration needful for 
carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for 
carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the 
religions with most dross in them have had something 
of this virtue ; but the Christian religion manifests it 
with unexampled splendor. 

Matthew Arnold 

Essays in Criticism 



REVEILLE 

SLEEPERS, awake I the night is slowly dying, 
The dawn is breaking on a thousand hills, 

The truth is trickling in a thousand rills. 
The phantoms of the past are swiftly flying, 
The idols ignominiously lying 

Deep in the dust of self-deluded wills. 

The legendary righteousness that fills 
Our bosoms with uncertainty and sighing. 
The ignorance that knows not — cares not — why ; 

The cowardice that trembles at the firing. 
The selfishness that truckles to a lie. 

The prejudice that interdicts inquiring, 
Did God give mind then but to dig a grave 
Wherein to bury^all the gifts He gave ? 

Philip Acton 



152 



RELIGION AND CONDUCT 

FOR my part I do not admit that morality is not 
strong enough to hold its own. But if it is 
demonstrated to me that I am wrong, and that without 
this or that theological dogma the human race will 
lapse into bipedal cattle, more brutal than the beasts 
by the measure of their greater cleverness, my next 
question is to ask for proof of the truth of the dogma. 
If this proof is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no 
drowning sailor ever clutched a hen-coop more tena- 
ciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, what- 
ever it may be. But if not, then I verily believe that 
the human race will go its evil way ; and my only con- 
solation lies in the reflection that, however bad our pos- 
terity may become, so long as they hold by the plain 
rule of not pretending to believe what they have no 
reason to believe because it may be to their advantage 
so to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest 
depths of immorality. 

Thomas Henry Huxley 
On the Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious 

Belief 



153 



WHEN IN DISGRACE 

WHEN, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries. 

And look upon myself, and curse my fate. 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope. 

With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 

Haply 1 think on thee, and then my state. 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

William Shakspere 



154 



JOY IN THE RIGHT 

EVERY age of European thought has had its 
Cyrenaics or Epicureans under many disguises : 
even under the hood of the monk. But — Let us eat 
and drink, for to-morrow we die I — is a proposal the real 
import of which differs immensely, according to the 
natural taste, and the acquired judgment, of the guests 
who sit at the table. It may express nothing better 
than the instinct of Dante's Ciacco, the accomplished 
glutton, in the mud of the Inferno ; or, since on no 
hypothesis does " man live by bread alone," may come 
to be identical with — " My meat is to do what is just 
and kind ; " while the soul, which can make no sincere 
claim to have apprehended anything beyond the veil of 
experience, yet never loses a sense of happiness in con- 
forming to the highest moral ideal it can clearly define 
for itself ; and actually, though with but faint hope, 
does the " Father's business." 

Walter Pater 
Marius the Epicurean 



155 



A LITTLE PARABLE 

I MADE the cross myself whose weight 
Was later laid on me. 
This thought is torture as I toil 
Up life's steep Calvary. 

To think mine own hands drove the nails : 

I sang a merry song, 
And chose the heaviest wood I had 

To build it firm and strong. 

If I had guessed — if I had dreamed 

Its weight was meant for me, 
I should have made a lighter cross 
To bear up Calvary ! 

Anne Reeve Aldrich 
Songs about Life, Love, and Death 
Copyright 1892, by Charles Scribner'a Sons 



«S6 



Trust 



If my hark sinks *tis to another sea I 

William Ellery Channing 

Rivers to the ocean run. 

Nor stay in all their course ; 
Fire ascending seeks the suny 

Both speed them to their source 
So a soul that'' 8 horn of God 

Pants to view His glorious face 
Upward tends to His ahode^ 

To rest in His embrace. 

E.OBEHT SeAGRAVE 



THE PESCADERO PEBBLES 

WHERE slopes the beach to the setting sun, 
On the Pescadero shore, 
For ever and ever the restless surf 
Rolls up with its sullen roar. 

And grasping the pebbles in white hands, 

And chafing them together, 
And grinding them against the cliffs 

In stormy and sunny weather, 

It gives them never any rest: 

All day, all night, the pain 
Of their long agony sobs on. 

Sinks, and then swells again. 

And seekers come from every clime, 

To search with eager care. 
For those whose rest has been the least ; 

For such have grown more fair. 

But yonder, round a point of rock. 

In a quiet, sheltered cove, 
Where storm ne'er breaks, and sea ne'er comes, 

The seekers never rove. 

The pebbles lie 'neath the sunny sky 

Quiet f orevermore : 
In dreams of everlasting peace 
They sleep upon the shore. 
Copyright 1882, by George H. Ellis 

159 



A Dream 

But ugly, and rough, and jagged still 
Are they left by the passing years ; 

For they miss the beat of the angry storms, 
And the surf that drips in tears. 

The hard turmoil of the pitiless sea 
Turns the pebble to beauteous gem. 

They who escape the agony 
Miss also the diadem. 

MiNOT JuDSON Savage 



A DREAM 

IT seemed as if I had awakened just before day- 
break, and that I stood in the midst of a vast 
illimitable plain, over which deep white sand was 
blown into wreaths and eddies by a slowly rising wind. 
Before me and beside me, as far as my eye could see, 
were graves ; they had been given up to the drifting 
sand so long that their outlines were wellnigh obliter- 
ated. Here and there what had been the base of a 
marble headstone remained white and rounded ; and 
toppling memorials of granite, defaced and illegible, 
told of ages of surrender to frost and sand and gale. 

I had risen from my grave. I could vaguely recog- 
nize the slanting shaft near by as the lofty obelisk 
erected in my boyhood to the memory of my father's 
father — a man in his day eminent in the place of his 

1 60 



A Dream 

birth and death. It was the resurrection morn ; I 
was of the first to rise from the dead. I felt no fear, 
only a certain benumbed expectancy. I knew that 
my father and mother stood behind me, but I dared 
not obey my strong impulse to turn and look upon 
them ; I was restrained, I knew not why or how. In 
the East, from moment to moment, the morning light 
grew brighter ; soon the sun appeared above the hori- 
zon, surely larger, more radiant than ever before. On 
the right hand and on the left the dead continued to 
come forth from the beating sand, to stand silently 
and calmly facing the East. Near me arose a young 
woman — no other than a sister who had died when I 
was twelve. By her side stood her little daughter. 
Then appeared her husband, who had died in middle 
life, and last of all an old man with shriveled front 
and long white hair ; he exchanged glances with my 
sister, and I knew that she, the young woman, was 
mother to this old man. 

Little by little the plain throughout its whole ex- 
panse became thickly peopled. In all that vast multi- 
tude nearly every face was peaceful; only a few bore 
marks of the pain which had been their last pain, and 
gradually these traces faded away. Men and women, 
youths and maidens, children and babes, all stood to- 
gether with wistful gaze fixed upon the East, whence 
should come HE who would open the gates of the 
New Life . Every heart in all those myriads throbbed 
as did mine, there was no spirit of dread in any — only 
a confidence that all was well — tiiat more and better 

i6i 



Intimations of Immortality- 
was in store for us all than we had ever hoped or pic- 
tured ; that there had been a divine inevitableness in 
the good and evil of that Old Life — now so far off and 
so much softened in the recollection. 
I remember no more. 

Antoine Lebrun 



INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 

OUR birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And Cometh from afar, 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home. 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy ; 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows- 
He 8ees it in his joy. 
The youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is nature's priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

162 



Intimations of Immortality 

Oh joy ! that in our embers 

Is something that doth live, 
That nature jet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not, indeed, 

For that which is most worthy to be blest — 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest. 
With new-pledged hope still fluttering in his 
breast — 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise ; 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings. 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 

High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised — 
But for those first affections. 
Those shadowy recollections. 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing, 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 

Of the eternal silence : truths to wake, 
To perish never — 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 

163 



Interlacements 

Nor man, nor boy, 
Nov all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence in a season of calm weather. 
Though inland far we be. 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither — 
Can in a moment travel thither. 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

William Wordsworth 



INTERLACEMENTS 

IN himian works, though labored on with pain, 
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain : 
With God's, a single can its end produce. 
Yet serves to second, too, some other use. 
So man, who here seems principal alone. 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal, 
'Tis but a part we see, and not the whole. 

Alexander Pope 

Essay on Man 



164 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

I CONFESS that I do not see why the very exis- 
tence of an invisible world may not in part de- 
pend on the personal response which any one of us 
may make to the religious appeal. God, himself, in 
short, may draw vital strength and increase of very 
being from our fidelity. For my part, I do not know 
what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life 
mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this, 
life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally 
gained for the imiverse by success, it is no better than 
a game of private theatricals from which one msLy 
withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight — as if 
there were something really wild in the universe which 
we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, were 
needed to redeem ; and first of all to redeem our own 
hearts from atheisms and fears. For such a half- 
wild, half -saved universe our nature is adapted. The 
deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the 
heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses 
and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears. As through 
the cracks and crannies of caverns those waters exude 
from the earth's bosom which then form the fountain- 
heads of springs, so in these crepuscular depths of per- 
sonality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions 
take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of com- 
munication with the nature of things; and compared 
with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract 
Copyright 1896, by William James 

i6S 



Is Life Worth Living ? 

statements and scientific arguments — the veto, for ex- 
ample, which the positivist pronounces upon our faith 
— sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth. For 
here possibilities, not finished facts, are the realities 
with which we have actively to deal; and to quote 
William Salter, " as the essence of courage is to stake 
one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to 
believe that the possibility exists." 

These, then, are my last words to you : Be not 
afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and 
your belief will help create the fact. The " scientific 
proof " that you are right may not be clear before the 
day of judgment (or some stage of being which that 
expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. But 
the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that 
then and there will represent them, may then turn to 
the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with 
words like those which Henry IV. greeted the tardy 
Crillon after a great victory had been gained : " Hang 
yourself, brave Crillon ! we fought at Arques, and you 

were not there." 

William James 

The Will to Believe 



i66 



HOPE 

WE cannot know 
Aught of that far-ofP realm by us named 
heaven, 
Where, in our fancy, lilies pure as snow 
Fleck all the emerald meadows which are riven 
By wondrous singing streams. We cannot know 
Until we go. 

We may not tell 
If our freed spirit, searching, shall discover 

The kindred souls of those we loved so well, 
Who, when they passed death's midnight river over, 
Passed speechless and alone. We may not tell 
Nor yet rebel. 

Have we not left 

That grand impulse to every great endeavor. 

Which swathes the broken heart by partings cleft ? 

Hope, skyward, burns its beacon-light forever, 

Beckoning us toward the truth : this we have left 

Who are bereft. 

Unknown 

The Radical^ Boston, November, 1868 

Reply to " The Undiscovered Country," by Edmund Clarence Sted- 
man ; see Section First. 

167 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

THE infinite and eternal Power that is manifested 
in every pulsation of the universe is none other 
than the living God. We may exhaust the resources of 
metaphysics in debating how far his nature may fitly be 
expressed in terms applicable to the psychical nature of 
Man ; such vain attempts will only serve to show how 
we are dealing with a theme that must ever transcend 
our finite powers of conception. But of some things 
we may feel sure. Himianity is not a mere local inci- 
dent in an endless and aimless series of cosmical 
changes. The events of the universe are not the work 
of chance, neither are they the outcome of blind neces- 
sity. Practically there is a purpose in the world 
whereof it is our highest duty to learn the lesson, how- 
ever well or ill we may fare in rendering a scientific 
account of it. When from the dawn of life we see 
tilings working together toward the evolution of the 
highest spiritual attributes of Man, we know, however 
the words may stumble in which we try to say it, that 
God is in the deepest sense a moral Being. The ever- 
lasting source of phenomena is none other than the 
infinite Power that makes for Righteousness. Thou 
canst not by searching find Him out ; yet put thy trust 
in Him, and against thee the gates of hell shall not 
prevail ; for there is neither wisdom nor imderstanding 
nor counsel against the Eternal. 

John Fiske 

The Idea of God 

Copyright 1885. by John Fiske 

i68 



WAITING 

SERENE I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea ; 
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, 
For lo ! my own shall come to me. 

I stay my haste, I make delays, 

For what avails this eager pace ? 
I stand amid the eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face. 

Asleep, awake, by night or day, 

The friends I seek are seeking me ; 

No wind can drive my bark astray, 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 

What matter if I stand alone ? 

I wait with joy the coming years ; 
My heart shall reap where it has sown. 

And garner up its fruit of tears. 

The waters know their own, and draw 
The brook that springs in yonder heights ; 

So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delights. 

The stars come nightly to the sky. 

The tidal wave unto the sea ; 
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high. 

Can keep my own away from me. 

John Burroughs 

169 



REASON 

DIM as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars 
To lonely, weary, wandering travelers, 
Is Reason to the soul ; and as on high 
Those rolling fires discover but the sky. 
Not light us here ; so Reason's glimmering ray 
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way 
But guide us upward to a better day, 
And as those nightly tapers disappear, 
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere ; 
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight ; 
So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light. 

John Dryden 

Religio Laid 



SEEN AND UNSEEN 

OH, thou God's mariner, heart of mine, 
Spread canvas to the airs divine I 
Spread sail ! and let thy fortune be 
Forgotten in thy Destiny. 

For Destiny pursues us well. 
By sea, by land, through heaven or hell : 
It suffers Death alone to die. 
Bids Life all change and chance defy. 
Copyright 1887, by Lee & Shepard 

170 



Seen and Unseen 

Would earth's dark ocean suck thee down ? 
Earth's ocean thou, O Life, shalt drovm, 
Shalt flood it with thy finer wave. 
And, sepulchered, entomb thy grave ! 

Life loveth life and good ; then trust 
What most the spirit would, it must ; 
Deep wishes, in the heart that be, 
Are blossoms of Necessity. 

A thread of law runs through thy prayer, 
Stronger than iron cables are ; 
And Love and Longing toward her goal 
Are pilots sweet to guide the Soul. 

So Life must live, and Soul must sail, 
And Unseen over Seen prevail. 
And all God's argosies come to shore, 
Let ocean smile, or rage or roar. 

And so, 'mid storm or calm, my bark 
With snowy wake still nears her mark ; 
Cheerily the trades of being blow. 
And sweeping down the wind I go. 

David Atwood Wasson 



171 



«I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON 
THE YEARS" 

I VEX me not with brooding on the years 
That were ere I drew breath : why should I then 

Distrust the darkness that may fall again 
When life is done ? Perchance in other spheres — 
Dead planets — I once tasted mortal tears, 

And walked as now among a throng of men, 

Pondering things that lay beyond my ken. 
Questioning death, and solacing my fears. 
Who knows ? Ofttimes strange sense have I of this, 

Vague memories that hold me with a spell. 

Touches of unseen lips upon my brow. 
Breathing some incommunicable bliss ! 

In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well ? 

Still lovelier life awaits thee. Fear not thou ! 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Copyright 1895, by Houghton, Miflain & Co. 



O THOU, WHOSE IMAGE 

OTHOU, whose image in the shrine 
Of human spirits dwells divine. 
Which from that precinct once conveyed, 
To be to outer day displayed, 
Doth vanish, part, and leave behind 
Mere blank and void of empty mind, 
Which willful fancy seeks in vain 
With casual shapes to fill again. 



172 



The Larger Prayer 

Thou, that in our bosom's shrine 
Dost dwell, unknown because divine. 

1 thought to speak, I thought to say, 

" The light is here," « Behold the way," 
« The voice was thus," and " Thus the word," 
And " Thus I saw," and " That I heard " ; 
But from the lips that half essayed, 
The imperfect utterance fell unmade. 

Thou, in that mysterious shrine 
Enthroned, as I must say, divine. 

1 will not frame one thought of what 
Thou mayst either be or not. 

I will not prate of " thus " and " so," 
And be profane with "yes" and "no" : 
Enough that in our soul and heart 
Thou, whatso'er Thou mayest be, art. 

Arthur Hugh Clough 



THE LARGER PRAYER 

AT first I prayed for Light : 
Could I but see the way, 
How gladly, swiftly would I walk 
To everlasting day ! 

And next I prayed for Strength : 
That I might tread the road 

With firm unfaltering feet, and win 
The heaven's serene abode. 

173 



Blessed Are They That Mourn 

And then I asked for Faith : 

Could I but trust my God, 
I'd live enfolded in his peace, 

Though foes were all abroad. 

But now I pray for Love : 

Deep love to God and man, 
A living love that will not fail. 

However dark his plan. 

And Light and Strength and Faith 

Are opening everywhere ! 
God only waited for me till 

I prayed the larger prayer. 

' Ednah Dow Cheney. 



BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN 



o 



DEEM not that earth's crowning bliss 

Is found in joy alone ; 
For sorrow, bitter though it be. 
Hath blessings all its own. 

From lips divine, like healing balm 
To hearts oppressed and torn. 

The heavenly consolation fell, — 
« Blessed are they that mourn.'* 

174 



Prayer of a Deaf and Dumb Boy 

Who never mourn'd hath never known 

What treasures grief reveals, 
The sympathies that humanize, 

The tenderness that heals. 

The power to look within the veil, 

And learn the heavenly lore, 
The key-word to life's mysteries. 

So dark to us before. 

Supernal wisdom, love divine, 

Breathed thro' the lips which said, 
" blessed are the souls that mourn. 
They shall be comforted." 

William Henry Burleigh 



PRAYER OF A DEAF AND DUMB BOY 

^ ^ T T THEN my long attached friend comes to me, 
V V I have pleasure to converse with him, and 
I rejoice to pass my eyes over his countenance ; but 
soon I weary of spending my time causelessly and un- 
improved, and I desire to leave him (but not in rude- 
ness), because I wished to be engaged in my business. 
But thou, O my Father, knowest I always delight to 
commune with thee in my lone and silent heart ; I am 
never full of thee ; I am always desiring thee. I 
hunger with strong hope and affection for thee, and I 
thirst for thy grace and thy spirit. 



Let Down the Bars, O Death ! 

" When I go to visit my friends, I must put on my 
best garments, and I must think of my manner to 
please them. I am tired to stay long, because my 
mind is not free, and they sometimes talk gossip with 
me. But oh, my Father, thou visitest me in my work, 
and I can lift up my desires to thee, and thou dost not 
steal my time by foolishness. I always ask in my 
heart, where can I find thee ? " 
Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in an Essay on 

Prayer 



LET DOWN THE BARS, O DEATH ! 

LET down the bars, O Death ! 
The tired flocks come in 
Whose bleating ceases to repeat, 
Whose wandering is done. 

Thine is the stillest night, 
Thine the securest fold ; 
Too near thou art for seeking thee, 
Too tender to be told. 

A death-blow is a life-blow to some 
Who, till they died, did not alive become ; 
Who, had they lived, had died, but when 
They died, vitality begun. 

Emily Dickinson 

Copyright 1890, by Roberts Brothers 
176 



COME NOT, OH LORD ! 

COME not, oh Lord ! in the dread robe of 
splendor 
Thou worest on the Mount, in the day of Thine ire ; 
Come veiled in those shadows, deep, awful, but tender, 
Which Mercy flings over Thy features of fire ! 

Lord ! Thou rememberest the night when Thy nation 
Stood fronting her foe by the red-rolling stream ; 

On Egypt Thy pillar frowned dark desolation. 
While Israel basked all the night in its beam. 

So when the dread clouds of anger enfold Thee, 
From us, in Thy mercy, the dark side remove ; 

While shrouded in terrors the guilty behold Thee, 
Oh, turn upon us the mild light of Thy Love ! 

Thomas Moore. 



EVELYN HOPE 

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die, too, in the glass ; 

Little has yet been changed, I think : 
The shutters are shut — no light may pass. 
Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 

177 



Evelyn Hope 

Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; 
It was not her time to love : beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim 
Duties enough and little cares, 

And now was quiet, now astir. 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 

Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope ? 

What ! your soul was pure and true ; 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire, and dew — 
And, just because I was thrice as old. 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
Each was nought to each, must I be told ? 
We were fellow-mortals — nought beside ? 

No, indeed ! for God above 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make. 
And creates the love to reward the love ; 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed, it may be for more lives yet. 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few ; 
Much is to learn, and much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 



178 



Evelyn Hope 

But the time will come — at last it will, 

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, (I shall say,) 
In the lower earth, in the years long still — 

That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine. 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red, 
And what you would do with me, in fine. 

In the new life come in the old one's stead. 

I have lived, (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times. 
Gained me the gains of various men. 

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
Yet one thing — one — in my soul's full scope. 

Either I missed or itself missed me : 
And I want to find you, Evelyn Hope ! 

What is the issue ? Let us see ! 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while. 

My heart seemed full as it could hold ? 
There was place and to spare for the frank young 
smile. 
And the red young mouth, and the hair's young 
gold. 
So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep ; 
See, I shut it inside the sweet, cold hand ! 
There, that is our secret ! go to sleep ! 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 
Robert Browning. 



179 



THE PULLEY 

WHEN God at first made man, 
Having a glass of blessings standing by. 
Let us, said He, pour on him all we can. 

Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 
Contract into a span. 



So strength first made a way, 

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pi 
When almost all was out God made a stay. 

Perceiving that alone of all His treasure 
Rest at the bottom lay. 

For if I should, said He, 

Bestow this jewel also on my creature, 
He would adore my gifts instead of me, 

And rest in nature, not the God of nature, 
So both should losers be. 



Yet let him keep the rest. 

But keep them with repining restlessness ; 
Let him be rich and weary, that at least 

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 
May toss him to my breast. 

George Herbert 



i8o 



I GRIEVE NOT 

I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes away 
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore, 
For, with that insight, cometh day by day, 

A greater bliss than wonder was before ; 
The real doth not clip the poet's wings, — 

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart 
Reveals some clew to spiritual things. 

And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art : 
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes. 

Their beauty thrills him with an inward sense ; 
He knows that outward seemings are but lies, 

Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence 
The soul that looks within for truth may guess 
The presence of some wondrous heavenliness. 

James Russell Lowell 

Copyright 1896, by Houghton, MiflMn & Co. 

IMMORTALITY 

FOR my own part, therefore, I believe in the im- 
mortality of the soul, not in the sense in which 
I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a 
supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's 
work. Such a belief, relating to regions quite inac- 
cessible to experience, cannot, of course, be clothed in 
terms of definite and tangible meaning. For the ex- 
perience which alone can give us such terms we must 
await that solemn day which is to overtake us all. 
Copyright 1884, by John Fiske 

l8l 



Immortality 



The belief can be most quickly defined by its negation, 
as the refusal to believe that this world is all. The 
materialist holds that when you have described the 
whole universe of phenomena, of which we can become 
cognizant under the conditions of the present life, then 
the whole story is told. It seems to me, on the con- 
trary, that the whole story is not told. I feel the 
omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it 
far easier for me to adopt the view of Euripides, that 
what we call death may be but the dawning of true 
knowledge and true life. The greatest philosopher of 
modern times, the master and teacher of all who shall 
study the process of evolution for many a day to come, 
holds that the conscious soul is not the product of a 
collocation of material particles, but is, in the deepest 
sense, a divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, 
the divine energy which is manifested throughout the 
knowable universe is the same energy that wells up in 
us as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can see 
no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some 
period in the evolution of Himianity this divine spark 
may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadi- 
ness to survive the wreck of material forms and en- 
dure forever. Such a crowning wonder seems to me 
no more than the fit climax to a creative work that 
has been ineffably beautiful and marvelous in all its 
myriad stages. John Fiske 

The Destiny of Man 



182 



10 VICTIS 

I SING the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the 
battle of life — 
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died over- 
whelmed in the strife ; 
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the 

resounding acclaim 
Of nations was lifted in choraSi whose brows wore the 

chaplet of fame, 
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, 

the broken in heart, 
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and 

desperate part ; 
Whose youth had no flower in its branches, whose hopes 

burned in ashes away, 
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped 

at, who stood at the dying of day 
With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, 

unheeded, alone, 
With death swooping down o'er their failure, and all 

but their faith overthrown. 

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus — its 

paean for those who have won ; 
While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high 
to the breeze and the sun 
Copyright 1885, by W. W. Story 

183 



lo Victis 

Gay banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying 

feet 
Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand on 

the field of defeat, 
In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, 

and dying, and there 
Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain- 
knotted brows, breathe a prayer. 
Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, " They 

only the victory win. 
Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished 

the demon that tempts us within ; 
Who have held to their faith, unseduced by the prize 

that the world holds on high ; 
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight 

— if need be, to die." 

Speak, History ! Who are Life's victors ? Unroll 

thy long annals, and say. 
Are they those whom the world called the victors — 

who won the success of a day ? 
The martyrs, or Nero ? The Spartans, who fell at 

Thermopylae's tryst, 
Or the Persians and Xerxes ? His judges, or Socrates? 

Pilate, or Christ ? 

William Wetmore Story 



184 



SONG OF THE MYSTIC 

I WALK down the Valley of Silence- 
Down the dim voiceless Valley — alone ! 
And I hear not the fall of a footstep 

Around me, save God's and my own ; 
And the hush of my heart is as holy 
As hovers where angels have flown ! 

Long ago was I weary of voices 

Whose music my heart could not win ; 

Long ago was I weary of noises 

That fretted my soul with their din ; 

Long ago was I weary of places 

Where I met but the himaan — and sin. 

I walked through the world with the worldly ; 

I craved what the world never gave ; 
And I said : *< In the world, each Ideal 

That shines like a star on life's wave, 
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real, 

And sleeps like a dream in a g^ave." 

And still did I pine for the Perfect, 

And still found the false with the true ; 
I sought 'mid the human for heaven. 

And caught a mere glimpse of its blue ; 
And I wept when the clouds of the mortal 
Veiled even that glimpse from my view. 
Copyright 1880, by Abram J. Ryan 

185 



Song of the Mystic 

And I toiled on, heart-tired of the Human ; 

And I moaned 'mid the mazes of men ; 
Till I knelt, long ago, at an altar 

And heard a voice call me. Since then 
I walk down the Valley of Silence 

That lies far beyond human ken. 

Do you ask what I found in the Valley ? 

'Tis my trysting-place with the Divine ; 
And I fell at the feet of the Holy, 

And above me, a voice said : " Be mine ! " 
And there arose from the depths of my spirit 

An echo — " My heart shall be thine." 

Do you ask how I live in the Valley ? 

I weep — and I dream — and I pray. 
But my tears are as sweet as the dew drops 

That fall on the roses in May ; 
And my prayer, like a perfume from censers, 

Ascendeth to God, night and day. 

In the hush of the Valley of Silence, 
I dream all the songs that I sing ; 

And the music floats down the dim Valley, 
Till each finds a word for a wing, 

That to men, like the Dove of the Deluge, 
A message of Peace they may bring. 

But far on the deep there are billows 

That never shall break on the beach ; 
And I have heard songs in the Silence 

i86 



The Future 

That never shall float into speech ; 
And I have had dreams in the Valley 
Too lofty for language to reach. 

And I have seen Thoughts in the Valley — 
Ah, me I how my spirit was stirred ! 

And they wear holy veils on their faces, 
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard ; 

They pass through the Valley, like virgins 
Too pure for the touch of a word ! 

Do you ask me the place of the Valley, 
Ye hearts that are harrowed by Care ? 

It lieth afar, between mountains. 
And God and His angels are there ; 

And one is the dark mount of Sorrow, 
And one the bright mountain of Prayer. 

Rev. Abram J. Kyaii 



THE FUTURE 

WHAT may we take into the vast Forever ? 
That marble door 
Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor, 

No fame-wreathed crown we wore, 
No garnered lore. 
Copyright 1889, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 

187 



The Future 

What can we bear beyond the unknown portal ? 

No gold, no gains, 
Of all our toiling : in the life immortal 

No hoarded wealth remains, 

Nor gilds, nor stains. 

Naked from out that far abyss behind us 

We entered here : 
No word came with our coming, to remind us 

What wondrous world vas near, 

No hope, no fear. 

Into the silent, starless Night before us, 

Naked we glide : 
No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us. 

No comrade at our side, 

No chart, no guide. 

Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow, 

Our footsteps fare ; 
The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow — 

His love alone is there, 

No curse, no care. 

Edward Rowland Sill 



i88 



CHRISTIANITY WILL SURVIVE 

CHRISTIANITY will survive because of its 
natural truth. Those who fancied they had 
done with it, those who had thrown it aside because 
what was presented under its name was so unreceiv- 
able, will have to return to it again, and to learn it 
better. The Latin nations — even the Southern Latin 
nations — will have to acquaint themselves with that 
fundamental docimient of Christianity, the Bible, and 
to discover wherein it differs from " a text of Hesiod." 
Neither will the old forms of Christian worship be ex- 
tinguished by the growth of a truer conception of their 
essential contents. Those forms thrown out at dimly 
grasped truth, approximate and provisional representa- 
tions of it, and which are now surrounded with such 
an atmosphere of tender and profound sentiment, will 
not disappear. They will survive as poetry. Above 
all, among the Catholic nations will this be the case. 
And, indeed, one must wonder at the fatuity of the 
Roman Catholic Church, that she should not herself 
see what a future there is for her here. Will there 
never arise among Catholics some great soul, to per- 
ceive that the eternity and universality, which is vainly 
claimed for Catholic dogma and the ultramontane 
system, might really be possible for Catholic worship ? 
But to rule over the moment and the credulous has 
more attraction than to work for the future and the 
sane. 

Matthew Arnold 

Essays 
189 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
Sails the unshadowed main, — 
The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wingp 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming 
hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 
Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
And every chambered cell. 
Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell. 

Before thee lies revealed. 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed J 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil ; 
Still, as the spiral grew. 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through. 

Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 
Copyright 1895, by Houghton, MiiBin & Co. 

190 



Under the Leaves 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 
Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is bom 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear the voice 
that sings : 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 



UNDER THE LEAVES 

OFT have I walked these woodland paths 
In sadness, not foreknowing 
That underneath the withered leaves 
The flowers of Spring were growing. 

To-day the winds have swept away 
Those wrecks of Autumn splendor, 

And here the sweet Arbutus flowers 
Are springing, fresh and tender. 

191 



On His Blindness 

O prophet flowers ! with lips of bloom 

Surpassing in their beauty 
The pearly tints of ocean-shells — 

Ye teach me faith and duty. 

" Walk life's dark ways," ye seem to say, 

" In love and hope, foreknowing 
That where man sees but withered leaves 

God sees the sweet flowers growing ! " 

Albert Laighton. 



ON HIS BLINDNESS 

WHEN I consider how my light is spent 
Ere half my days, in this dark world and 
wide. 
And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide — 
" Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? " 
I fondly ask ; but patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies : " God doth not need 
Either man's work, or his own gifts ; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state 
Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

John Milton 

192 



NIGHT AND DEATH 

MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent 
knew 
Thee by report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame 
This glorious canopy of light and blue ? 
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
And lo ! creation widened on man's view. 
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun ! or who could find. 
Whilst flow'r and leaf, and insect stood revealed. 
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ! 
Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife ? — 
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? 

Joseph Blanco White 



DOUBT ITSELF IS A DECISION 

IF this really be a moral universe ; if by my acts I be 
a factor of its destinies; if to believe where I 
may doubt be itself a moral act analogous to voting 
for a side not yet sure to win, — by what right shall 
they close in upon me and steadily negate the deepest 
conceivable function of my being by their preposterous 
command that I shall stir neither hand nor foot, but 
remain balancing myself in eternal and insoluble 
Copyright 1896, by William James 



Doubt Itself is a Decision 

doubt ? Why, doubt itself is a decision of the widest 
practical reach, if only because we may miss by doubt- 
ing what goods we might be gaining by espousing the 
winning side. But more than that ! it is often prac- 
tically impossible to distinguish doubt from dogmatic 
negation. If I refuse to stop a murder because I am 
in doubt whether it be not justifiable homicide, I am 
virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a 
boat because I am in doubt whether my efforts will 
keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in 
the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, 
I actively connive at my destruction. He who com- 
mands himself not to be credulous of God, of duty, of 
freedom, of immortality, may again and again be in- 
distinguishable from him who dogmatically denies 
them. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally 
of immorality. Who is not for is against. The uni- 
verse will have no neutrals in these questions. In 
theory as in practice, dodge or hedge, or talk as we like 
about a wise scepticism, we are really doing volunteer 
military service for one side or the other. 

William James 
The Will to Believe 



194 



THE ANCIENT FAITH 

TRUE, the harsh founders of thy church reviled 
That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child ; 
Must thou be raking in the crumbled past 
For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast ? 
See from the ashes of Helvetia's pUe 
The whitened skull of old Servetus smile ! 

Round her young heart thy " Roman Upas " threw 
Its firm, deep fibers, strengthening as she grew ; 
Thy sneering voice may call them " Popish tricks," 
Her Latin prayers, her dangling crucifix. 

But De Profundis blessed her father's grave, 
That " idol " cross her dying mother gave ! 
What if some angel looks with equal eyes 
On her and thee, the simple and the wise, 

Writes each dark fault against thy brighter creed, 
And drops a tear with every foolish bead ! 
Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking page ; 
Blush for the wrongs that atain thy happier age ; 
Strive with the wanderer from the better path. 
Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath ; 
Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall, 
Have thine own faith, — but hope and pray for all I 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 

A Rhymed Lesson 
Copyright 1895, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



THE PRESENT 

WE live not in our moments or our years — 
The Present we fling from us like the rind 
Of some sweet Future, which we after find 
Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears, 
And water it beforehand with our tears — 
Vain tears for that which never may arrive : 
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live, 
Neglected or unheeded, disappears. 
Wiser it were to welcome and make ours 
Whate'er of good, though small, the present brings— 
Kind greetings, sunshine, songs of birds, and flowers. 
With a child's pure delight in little things ; 

And of the griefs unborn to rest secure, 
Knowing that mercy ever will endure. 

Richard Chenevix Trench 



THE FISHER'S BOY 

MY life is like a stroll upon the beach 
As near the water's edge as I can go ; 
My tardy steps sometimes its waves o'erreach. 
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 

My sole employment is and scrupulous care, 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides ; 

Each smoother pebble and each shell more rare, 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides. 



196 



Man 

I have but few companions on the shore, 

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea ; 

Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view ; 

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 

And I converse with many a shipwreck'd crew. 
Henry David Thoreau 



MAN 

MAN is all symmetry — 
Full of proportions, one limb to another, 
And all to all the world besides. 
Each part may call the farthest brother; 
For head with foot hath private amity. 
And both with moons and tides. 

Nothing hath got so far 
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey. 

His eyes dismount the highest star; 

He is in little all the sphere. 
Herbs gladly heal our flesh, because that they 

Find their acquaintance there. 

197 



Man 

For us the winds do blow, 
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow. 

Nothing we see but means our good. 

As our delight, or as our treasure; 
The whole is either our cupboard of food 

Or cabinet of pleasure. 

The stars have us to bed — 
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws. 

Music and light attend our head; 

All things unto our flesh are kind 
In their descent and being — to our mind 

In their ascent and cause. 

More servants wait on man 
Than he'll take notice of. In every path 

He treads down that which doth befriend him 

When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
O mighty love! Man is one world, and hath 

Another to attend him. 

Since then, my God, thou hast 
So brave a palace built, oh dwell in it, 

That it may dwell with thee at last ! 

Till then afford us so much wit 
That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee, 

And both thy servants be. 

George Herbert 



198 



O LORD ! THAT SEEST FROM YON STARRY 
HEIGHT 

OLORD ! that seest from yon starry height 
Centered in one the future and the past, 
Fashioned in thine own image, see how fast 
The world obscures in me what once was bright ! 
Eternal Sun ! the warmth which thou hast given 
To cheer life's flowery April fast decays ; 
Yet in the hoary winter of my days 
Forever green shall be my trust in Heaven. 
Celestial Eang ! O, let thy presence pass 
Before my spirit, and an image fair 
Shall meet that look of mercy from on high, 
As the reflected image in a glass 
Doth meet the look of him who seeks it there, 
And owes its being to the gazer's eye. 

Francisco de Aldana 
Translated by Henry W, Longfellow 



TO A WATERFOWL 

WHITHER, midst falling dew. 
While glow the heavens with the last steps 
of day 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way ? 

199 



To a Waterfowl 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek*st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 

There is a power whose care 
Teaches thy way along the pathless coast, — 
The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned. 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find thy simimer home, and rest. 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend. 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given. 

And shall not soon depart. 

200 



Through Peace to Light 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

William Cullen Bryant 



THROUGH PEACE TO LIGHT 

I DO not ask, O Lord, that life may be 
A pleasant road ; 
I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me 
Aught of its load ; 

I do not ask that flowers should always spring 

Beneath my feet ; 
I know too well the poison and the sting 

Of things too sweet. 

For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead. 

Lead me aright — 
Though strength should falter, and though heart should 
bleed — 

Through Peace to Light. 

I do not ask, O Lord, that Thou shouldst shed 

Full radiance here ; 
Give but a ray of peace, that I may tread 

Without a fear. 

20I 



The Master's Touch 

I do not ask my cross to understand, 

My way to see ; 
Better in darkness just to feel Thy Hand 

And follow Thee. 

Joy is like restless day ; but peace divine 

Like quiet night : 
Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine, 

Through Peace to Light. 

Adelaide Anne Procter 



THE MASTER'S TOUCH 

IN the still air the music lies unheard ; 
In the rough marble beauty lies unseen ; 
To wake the music and the beauty needs 
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 

Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hand. 
Let not the music that is in us die ; 

Great Sculptor, hew and polish us ; nor let, 
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie. 

Spare not the stroke ; do with us as Thou wilt ; 

Let there be naught unfinish'd, broken, marr'd ; 
Complete Thy purpose, that we may become 

Thy perfect image, O our God and Lord. 

HORATIUS BONAR 
202 



MY GOD, I LOVE THEE 

MY God, I love Thee ! not because 
I hope for heaven thereby ; 
Nor because those who love Thee not 
Must burn eternally. 

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me 

Upon the cross embrace ! 
For me didst bear the nails and spear, 

And manifold disgraoe. 

And griefs and torments numberless, 

And sweat of agony. 
Yes, death itself — and all for one 

That was Thine enemy. 

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 

Should I not love Thee well ? 
Not for the hope of winning heaven, 

Nor of escaping hell ! 

Not with the hope of gaining aught. 

Not seeking a reward ; 
But as Thyself hath loved me, 

O ever-loving Lord ! 

E'en so I love Thee, and will love, 

And in Thy praise will sing — 
Solely because Thou art my God, 
And my eternal King. 

St. Francis Xavier 
Translated by Edward Caswall 

203 



"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP" 

OF all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar, 
Along the Psalmist's music deep, 
Now tell me if that any is 
For gift or grace surpassing this — 
" He giveth his beloved sleep." 

What would we give to our beloved ? 
The hero's heart, to be unmoved — 

The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep— 
The senate's shout to patriot's vows — 
The monarch's crown, to light the brows ? 

" He giveth his beloved sleep.'* 

O earth so full of dreary noises ! 
O men with wailing in your voices ! 

O delved gold the wailers' heap ! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God makes a silence through you all, 

" And giveth his beloved sleep." 

His dew drops mutely on the hill ; 
His cloud above it saileth still, 

Though on its slope men toil and reap. 
More softly than the dew is shed. 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 

" He giveth his beloved sleep." 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

204 



THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 

GOD is never so far off 
As even to be near. 
He is within, our spirit is 

The home he holds most dear. 

To think of him as by our side. 

Is almost as untrue 
As to remove his throne beyond 

Those skies of starry blue. 

So all the while I thought myself 

Homeless, forlorn and weary, 
Missing my joy, I walked the earth 

Myself God's sanctuary. 

Frederick William Faber 



PRAYER 

PRAYER is the soul's sincere desire, 
Uttered or imexpressed — 
The motion of a hidden fire 
That trembles in the breast. 

Prayer is the burthen of a sigh. 

The falling of a tear — 
The upward glancing of an eye. 

When none but God is near. 

James Montgomery 

205 



NATURE 

AS a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
Half-willing, half-reluctant to be led, 
And leave his broken playthings on the floor, 
Still gazing at them through the open door. 
Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
By promises of others in their stead. 
Which though more splendid may not please him 

more ; 
So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay. 
Being too full of sleep to understand 
How far the unknown transcends the what we know. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Copyright 1893, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



THE PROBLEM 

NOT from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought ; 
Never from lips of cunning fell 
The thrilling Delphic oracle ; 
Out from the heart of Nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old ; 
The litanies of nature came. 



206 



The Problem 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below — 
The canticles of love and woe : 
The hand that roxmded Peter's dome, 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
Himself from God he coidd not free ; 
He builded better than he knew ; — 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast ? 

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, 

Painting with morn each annual cell ? 

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 

To her old leaves new myriads ? 

Such and so grew these holy piles, 

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 

As the best gem upon her zone ; 

And morning opes with haste her lids 

To gaze upon the pyramids ; 

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky. 

As on its friends, with kindred eye ; 

For out of thought's interior sphere 

These wonders rose to upper air ; 

And nature gladly gave them place, 

Adopted them into her race, 

And granted them an equal date 

With Andes and with Ararat. 

207 



The Overflowing Cup 

These temples grew as grows the grass — 

Art might obey, but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 

To the vast soul that o'er him planned ; 

And the same power that reared the shrine 

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 

Ever the fiery Pentecost 

Girds with one flame the countless host, 

Trances the heart through chanting choirs, 

And through the priest the mind inspires. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



THE OVERFLOWING CUP 

INTO the crystal chalice of the soul 
Is falling, drop by drop, Life's blending mead. 

The pleasant waters of our childhood speed 
And enter first ; and Love pours in its whole 
Deep flood of tenderness and gall. There roll 

The drops of sweet and bitter that proceed 

From wedded trustfulness, and hearts that bleed 
For children that outrun us to the goal. 
And later come the calmer joys of age — 

The restful streams of quietude that flow 
Around their fading lives, whose heritage 

Is whitened locks and voice serene and low. 
These added blessings round the vessel up — 
Death is the overflowing of the cup. 

Andrew Rice Saxton 

208 



THE WAYSIDE CROSS 

WAS it to my spirit's gain or loss, 
One bright and balmy morning, as I went 
From Liege's lovely environs to Ghent, 
If hard by the wayside I found a cross. 
That made me breathe a prayer upon the spot — 
While Nature of herself, as if to trace 
The emblem's use, had trailed around its base 
The blue significant Forget-Me-Not ? 
Methought, the claims of charity to urge 
More forcibly along with Faith and Hope, 
The pious choice had pitch'd upon the verge 

Of a delicious slope. 
Giving the eye much variegated scope ! — 
« Look round," it whisper'd, " on that prospect rare, 
Those vales so verdant and those hills so blue ; 
Enjoy the sunny world, so fresh and fair. 
But " — (how the simple legend pierc'd me thro' !) 

« Priez pour les malheureux." 

Thomas Hood 
Ode to Rae Wilsorit Esquire 



209 



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 

O FRIENDS ! with whom my feet have trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer, 
Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of man I bear. 

I trace your lines of argument ; 

Your logic linked and strong 
I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 

And fears a doubt as wrong. 

But still my human hands are weak 

To hold your iron creeds ; 
Against the words ye bid me speak 

My heart within me pleads. 

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 

Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God ! He needeth not 

The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod ; 

I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 

Ye praise His justice ; even such 

His pitying love I deem : 
Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch 
The robe that hath no seam. 
Copyright 1894, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

2IO 



The Eternal Goodness 

Ye see the curse that overbroods 
A world of pain and loss ; 

I hear our Lord's beatitudes 
And prayer upon the cross. 



I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear, with gppoan and travail-crieSi 

The world confess its sin. 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood. 

To one fixed trust my spirit clings ; 
I know that God is good ! 



And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 
If hopes like these betray, 

Pray for me that my feet may gain 
The sure and safer way. 

211 



Crossing the Bar 

And Thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on Thee ! 

John Greenleaf Whittier 



CROSSING THE BAR 

SUNSET and evening star, 
And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam. 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark f 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark ; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have cross'd the bar. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

212 



ALL'S WELL 

PROPHETIC Hope, thy fine discourse 
Foretold not half life's good to me ; 
Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force 
To show how sweet it is to be ! 
Thy witching dream 
And pictured scheme 
To match the fact still want the power ; 
Thy promise brave 
From birth to grave 
Life's bloom may beggar in an hoiir. 

Ask and receive, — 'tis sweetly said ; 
Yet what to plead for I know not ; 
For wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped, 
And aye to thanks returns my thought. 

If I would pray, 

I've nought to say 
But this, that God may be God still, 

For Him to live 

Is still to give, 
And sweeter than my wish his will. 

O wealth of life beyond all bound ! 
Eternity each moment given ! 

Copyright 1887, by Lee & Shepard 

213 



All's Well 

What plummet may the Present sound ? 
Who promises 2i future heaven ? 

Or glad, or grieved, 

Oppressed, relieved. 
In blackest night, or brightest day, 

Still pours the flood 

Of golden good, 
And more than heartf ull fills me aye. 

My wealth is common ; I possess 

No petty province, but the whole ; 
What's mine alone is mine far less 
Than treasure shared by every soul. 

Talk not of store. 

Millions or more — 
Of values which the purse may hold, — 

But this divine ! 

I own the mine 
Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold. 

I have a stake in every star. 

In every beam that fills the day ; 
All hearts of men my coffers are. 
My ores arterial tides convey ; 

The fields, the skies, 

The sweet replies 
Of thought to thought are my gold-dust,- 

The oaks, the brooks, 

And speaking looks 
Of lovers' faith and friendship's trust. 

214 



All's Well 

Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flow 

For him who lives above all years, 
Who all-immortal makes the Now, 
And is not ta'en in Time's arrears, 

His life's a hymn 

The seraphim 
Might hark to hear or help to sing, 

And to his soul 

The boundless whole 
Its beauty all doth daily bring. 

" All mine is thine," the sky-sodl saith ; 

" The wealth I am must thou become ; 
Richer and richer, breath by breath, — 
Inmiortal gain, immortal room ! " 
And since all His 
Mine also is. 
Life's gift outruns my fancy far, 
And drowns the dream 
In larger stream, 
As morning drinks the morning star. 

David Atwood Wasson 



215 



PRINTED AT THE WINTHROP PRESS 

NEW YORK FOR VOLNEY STREAMER 

MDCCCXCVII 




014 013 709 1 



arici 



